Full text of "Henrik Ibsen: Critical Studies."

See other formats

Google

This is a digital copy of a book that was prcscrvod for gcncrations on library shclvcs bcforc it was carcfully scannod by Google as pari of a projcct

to make the world's books discoverablc online.

It has survived long enough for the Copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject

to Copyright or whose legal Copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books

are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, cultuie and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.

Marks, notations and other maiginalia present in the original volume will appear in this flle - a reminder of this book's long journcy from the

publisher to a library and finally to you.

Usage guidelines

Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the
public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken Steps to
prcvcnt abuse by commcrcial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automatcd qucrying.
We also ask that you:

+ Make non-commercial use ofthefiles We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for
personal, non-commercial purposes.

+ Refrain from automated querying Do not send aulomated queries of any sort to Google's System: If you are conducting research on machinc
translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a laige amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encouragc the
use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.

+ Maintain attributionTht GoogX'S "watermark" you see on each flle is essential for informingpcoplcabout this projcct andhclping them lind
additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.

+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are lesponsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just
because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other
countries. Whether a book is still in Copyright varies from country to country, and we can'l offer guidance on whether any speciflc use of
any speciflc book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search mcans it can bc used in any manner
anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liabili^ can be quite severe.

Äbout Google Book Search

Google's mission is to organizc the world's Information and to make it univcrsally accessible and uscful. Google Book Search hclps rcadcrs
discover the world's books while hclping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the füll icxi of ihis book on the web

at |http : //books . google . com/|

Google

IJber dieses Buch

Dies ist ein digitales Exemplar eines Buches, das seit Generationen in den Realen der Bibliotheken aufbewahrt wurde, bevor es von Google im
Rahmen eines Projekts, mit dem die Bücher dieser Welt online verfugbar gemacht werden sollen, sorgfältig gescannt wurde.
Das Buch hat das Urheberrecht überdauert und kann nun öffentlich zugänglich gemacht werden. Ein öffentlich zugängliches Buch ist ein Buch,
das niemals Urheberrechten unterlag oder bei dem die Schutzfrist des Urheberrechts abgelaufen ist. Ob ein Buch öffentlich zugänglich ist, kann
von Land zu Land unterschiedlich sein. Öffentlich zugängliche Bücher sind unser Tor zur Vergangenheit und stellen ein geschichtliches, kulturelles
und wissenschaftliches Vermögen dar, das häufig nur schwierig zu entdecken ist.

Gebrauchsspuren, Anmerkungen und andere Randbemerkungen, die im Originalband enthalten sind, finden sich auch in dieser Datei - eine Erin-
nerung an die lange Reise, die das Buch vom Verleger zu einer Bibliothek und weiter zu Ihnen hinter sich gebracht hat.

Nu tzungsrichtlinien

Google ist stolz, mit Bibliotheken in partnerschaftlicher Zusammenarbeit öffentlich zugängliches Material zu digitalisieren und einer breiten Masse
zugänglich zu machen. Öffentlich zugängliche Bücher gehören der Öffentlichkeit, und wir sind nur ihre Hüter. Nie htsdesto trotz ist diese
Arbeit kostspielig. Um diese Ressource weiterhin zur Verfügung stellen zu können, haben wir Schritte unternommen, um den Missbrauch durch
kommerzielle Parteien zu veihindem. Dazu gehören technische Einschränkungen für automatisierte Abfragen.
Wir bitten Sie um Einhaltung folgender Richtlinien:

+ Nutzung der Dateien zu nichtkommerziellen Zwecken Wir haben Google Buchsuche für Endanwender konzipiert und möchten, dass Sie diese
Dateien nur für persönliche, nichtkommerzielle Zwecke verwenden.

+ Keine automatisierten Abfragen Senden Sie keine automatisierten Abfragen irgendwelcher Art an das Google-System. Wenn Sie Recherchen
über maschinelle Übersetzung, optische Zeichenerkennung oder andere Bereiche durchführen, in denen der Zugang zu Text in großen Mengen
nützlich ist, wenden Sie sich bitte an uns. Wir fördern die Nutzung des öffentlich zugänglichen Materials für diese Zwecke und können Ihnen
unter Umständen helfen.

+ Beibehaltung von Google-MarkenelementenDas "Wasserzeichen" von Google, das Sie in jeder Datei finden, ist wichtig zur Information über
dieses Projekt und hilft den Anwendern weiteres Material über Google Buchsuche zu finden. Bitte entfernen Sie das Wasserzeichen nicht.

+ Bewegen Sie sich innerhalb der Legalität Unabhängig von Ihrem Verwendungszweck müssen Sie sich Ihrer Verantwortung bewusst sein,
sicherzustellen, dass Ihre Nutzung legal ist. Gehen Sie nicht davon aus, dass ein Buch, das nach unserem Dafürhalten für Nutzer in den USA
öffentlich zugänglich ist, auch fiir Nutzer in anderen Ländern öffentlich zugänglich ist. Ob ein Buch noch dem Urheberrecht unterliegt, ist
von Land zu Land verschieden. Wir können keine Beratung leisten, ob eine bestimmte Nutzung eines bestimmten Buches gesetzlich zulässig
ist. Gehen Sie nicht davon aus, dass das Erscheinen eines Buchs in Google Buchsuche bedeutet, dass es in jeder Form und überall auf der
Welt verwendet werden kann. Eine Urheberrechtsverletzung kann schwerwiegende Folgen haben.

Über Google Buchsuche

Das Ziel von Google besteht darin, die weltweiten Informationen zu organisieren und allgemein nutzbar und zugänglich zu machen. Google
Buchsuche hilft Lesern dabei, die Bücher dieser We lt zu entdecken, und unterstützt Au toren und Verleger dabei, neue Zielgruppcn zu erreichen.
Den gesamten Buchtext können Sie im Internet unter |http: //books . google .corül durchsuchen.

« /

3BCB

/j'ro

HENRIK IBSEN. BJÖRNSTJERNE
BJÖRNSON

'»■)

\ ■ .(

HENRIK IBSEN. BJÖKN-
STJERNE BJÖRNSON.
CRITICAL STUDIES. BY
GEORGl^ BRANDES^ji»« _^

/ / ; ^ ^-^

NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN
COMPANY.' MDCCCXCIX

>yf

CONTENTS

HENRIK IBSEN—

INTRODUCTION
AUTHOR'S PREFACE .
FIRST IMPRESSION (1867) .
SECOND IMPRESSION (1882)
THIRD IMPRESSION (1898) .

INDEX

PAGE

I
39

83
169

BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON-

INTRODUCTORY NOTE
IMPRESSION (1882) .

INDEX

125
127
171

•

HENRIK IBSEN

AUTHOBISED TBANSLATION

By jessie muir

SETISED, WTTH AN INTEODÜCTION

By WILLIAM ARCHER

A 1

•

INTRODUCTION

It would be a mere impertinence on my part, at any rate in
this place, to attempt any criticism of Dr. Brandes's criticism
of Henrik Ibsen. All I have any desire or right to do is to
emphasise what Dr. Brandes himself says in bis preface as to
the peculiar, perhaps unique, circumstances under which this
book has come into existence. I can remember no other instance
in which a great critic, having foUowed the work of a great poet
from, practically, the outset of the poet's career, has made, so to
speak, a Journal of bis impressions, and republished them at
last, with no correction or modification of any moment, simply
in the cbronological order of their original appearance. This
is what Dr. Brandes has done. His book is thus not a focussed
appreciation of the whole of Ibsen by the whole of Brandes, if
I may so express it, but rather a contemporaneously-noted record
of the ever-developing relation, throughout more than thirty
years, of these two remarkable minds. It might have for its
title, not, perhaps, "Ibsen Day by Day," but certainly "Ibsen
Phase by Phase ; " and this, of course, implies " Brandes Phase
by Phase " as well.

Here lies the special interest and peculiar value of the book.
If the reader wishes to see Dr. Brandes's judgments in their
true perspective, it is essential that he should place himself,
in relation to each of the three essays, at the writer's stand-
point in time. To assist him in doing so, I shall briefly
summarise Henrik Ibsen's literary position at the three dates in
question.

The " First Impression " was begun, Dr. Brandes teils us, in

X INTRODUCTION

1866, and finished in 1867. The works of Ibsen which Dr. ^

Brandes had before him in 1867 were these : —

Catilina (1850).

The Feast at Solhaug (1856).

Lady Inger of Ostraat (1857). ^

The Vikings at Helgeland (1858).

Love's Comedy (1862).

The Pretenders (1864). \

Brand (1866).

Peer Gynt (1867).

Ibsen had also written, in 1850, The Herds Grave, in 1852, St, ^

Johris Night y and in 1857, Olaf Liliekrans ; but none of these
were at that time published or known to Dr. Brandes. He sub-
sequently read two of them in manuscript, and speaks of them in
bis " Third Impression." The first four sections of the " First
Impression " were finished before the appearance of Peer Gynt,
; The fifth section, dealing with Peer Gynty may thus be regarded
practically as a contemporary criticism of " the book of the day."
It will be noted that in 1867 Ibsen had not written a single prose
play of modern life. He was totally unknown outside Scandi-
navia, and only a year had passed since he made his first decisive
success in Norway and Denmark with Brand. Even with the
Scandinavian public he was still, as it were, on his probation. ^

Dr. Brandes's essay was the first detailed study of his work by
any critic of authority.

The "Second Impression" dates from 1882. It Covers what
may be called Ibsen^s transition period. The plays published
between 1867 and 1882 are as follows : —

The League of Youth (1869).
Emperor and Galilean (1873).
The Pillars of Society (1877).
A DolFs House (1879).
Ghosts (1881).

These dates indicate that the poet was, during part of this period,
hesitating as to the path his genius ought to pursue. From 1862

r- ,*

INTRODUCTION xi

to 1869 he had produced a play every two years, except that
Peer Gynty by a miracle of productivity, followed close on the
heels of Brand, with only one year's interval. In 1869 he
produced his first prose play of modern life, The League of
Youth ; and then came a pause of four years, during which he
published nothing. It is true that when he again broke silence
it was with the titanic double-drama, Emperor and Galilean,
which implied, if that were all, an amount of historical study
that might well have occupied an even longer interval. But
after the appearance of the " world-historic drama," another
Space of four years elapsed before he came forward, in 1877,
with The Pillars of Society, his second prose play of modern
life. He had now definitely chosen his line of development,
and before the date of the "Second Impression," he had
taken two gigantic strides along his new path, in A DolVs
House and Ghosts. By this time his fame had spread beyond
the limits of Scandinavia. The Pillars of Society had at once
become populär (as it is to this day) on the German stage,
and had prepared the way for A DolVs House, which, while
equally populär, had made a far deeper impression in intellectual
circles. Most of his earlier works, too, had been translated into
German ; of Brand, indeed, there existed three or four trans-
lations. Outside Germany, however, Ibsen was little known
at the date of the '* Second Impression." Mr. Gosse, it is
true, had introduced him to English readers, but in the Latin
countries his name had scarcely been heard. He stood, when
Dr. Brandes wrote, on the threshold of the world-wide fame
upon which he was soon to enter. Ghosts, the harbinger, as
it may fäirly be. called, of the whole modern dramatic movement
in Europe, had just been published, and had not had time to
make its mark outside Scandinavia, where it had been received
with a shriek of execration. Dr. Brandes was one of the few
critics who instantly perceived its greatness and significance.
He Said of it, in an article not here reproduced, that it was,
if not the greatest achievement, at any rate the noblest action

«s

xii INTRODUCTION

of the poet's career. I quote from memory, at a distance
of eighteen years, but I believe my recollection is substan-
tially accurate. There has seldom been a truer or more timely
criticism.

The ''Third Impression " belongs to the present year (1898).
Since the appearance of the " Second Impression " Ibsen has
added to the roll of his writings the following plays : —

An Enemy of the People (1882).

The Wild Duck (1884).

Rosmersholm (1886).

The Lady from the Sea (1888).

Hedda Gabler (1890).

The Master-Builder (1892).

LittleEyolf(i894).

John Gabriel Borkman (1896).

Having reminded the reader of the order of these works, I
need do no more. It seemed desirable to define the position
occupied by Ibsen at the dates of the earlier '* Impressions " ;
his Position at the present day is matter of common know-
ledge.

This book, then, niay be regarded as in some sort a running
commentary on Ibsen's spiritual development. The leading
English, French, and German critics (Mr. Gosse and possibly
one or two Germans excepted) knew nothing of Ibsen until the
greater number of his works were already written, and then
studied them in the mass, as it were, and for the most part in
translations. Dr. Brandes, on the other band, writing practi-
cally the same language as Ibsen's, has foUowed every Step of
his development from the moment when his genius attained
anything like maturity. He approached the study of the poet's
works with a perfectly free mind, neither overawed by a great
ready-made reputation, nor warped into antagonism by sectarian
mispraise. His criticism throughout is absolutely candid. In
the ** First Impression," indeed, it is so largely unfavourable that

INTRODUCTION xiii

the fact of their subsequent intimate friendship speaks volumes
for the character of both men, Many a lesser poet would have
resented for ever the critic's outspokenness. Ibsen, on the
contrary, not only entered into cordial personal relations with
his critic, but actually altered several passages (as will be seen
from the notes on pp. 23 and 30) in deference to Dr. Brandes's
judgment. During the 'seventies, Ibsen and Dr. Brandes were
in close correspondence ; and the extracts from the poet's letters,
which appear in the " Second Impression," impart to it a pecu-
liar interest and importance. In none of his plays has Ibsen
Said anything weightier or more characteristic than the remark
(quoted on p. 56), " What is really wanted is a revolution of the
»pirit of man " — Menneskeaandens Revoltering.

Dr. Brandes's book of Ungdomsvers (" Poems of Youth "), pub-
*» iished a few months ago in Copenhagen, enables us to Supplement

this utterance. We learn from the motto prefixed ,to an ad-
dress "To Henrik Ibsen," that the poet added, "And in that
revolution you must be one of the leaders." Close as is the
friendship, however, indicated in this correspondence, no one
v^ho reads the foUowing pages can for a moment pretend that
has impaired Dr. Brandes's independence of judgment. It is
.0 eulogy of Ibsen that is here presented to the English-speak-

ig public. Some admirers of the poet may think the critic, at
. >ints, over-severe and perhaps even captious. Let them re-

'icmbcr that absolute sincerity is of more importance than
/ ' Jbsolute correctness, even if " correctness " could fitly be pre-

iicated of any aesthetic judgment. It is their complete unsec-
tarianism, even more than their delicacy of appreciation, that
leads me to regard these essays as of greater value than many
more exhaustive and pretentipus critical studies of Ibsen ^that
havc appeared in Swedish, German, and French. Here, and

erc only, has a critical intelligence of the first order been
. 'irought to bear, in detail, upon the poet's creations.
V Passages quoted from Brand are given in Professor Herford's
rranslation (Heinemann, 1894); passages from Peer Gynty in

xiv INTRODUCTION 1

the transIatioD by my brother and myself, published by Walter '

Scott. Other metrical quotations, hitherto untranslated, I havc *

rendered as best I might, since no other course seemed possible, - J

but must beg the reader to remember that my versions do sad
injustice to the poet's metrical style. Footnotes appended by Dn
Brandes are distinguished by his Initials. For all others I am j

responsible,

WILLIAM ARCHER.

* \

■

■;

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

I f In the summer of 1 866, after having been for some years interested
f I in Henrik Ibsen's work, I wrote the first pages of this book ; I
ji. could not, however, get on with the paper I was desirous of

II writing, and went to Paris. On my retum, in 1867, I finished
the paper, which was the eariiest fuU-length picture of Ibsen's
intcllectual personality that had been attempted in Europe.

After an interval of between fifteen and sixteen years, I again,

in 1882, returned to the Norwegian poet^s personality and works.

He had in the meantime developed greatly, and had produced a

number of works that threw his earlier ones into the shade. He

had become another and a greater man, and had gained extra-

ordinary renown in Scandinavian countries, while his name

had begun to penetrate into other lands, especially Germany.

[ Neither in his inward nor in his outward circumstances was he

I now quite the same as at the time the first account of his poetic

I labours was given.

But neither was his critic quite the same. He had in the
meantime gone through a great deal, and had consequently
acquired a larger outlook upon life, and a more flexible emotional
nature. He had dropped all the doctrines that were due to educa-
tion and tradition. He understood the poet better now.

Once more sixteen years have passed. With the equable
power that distinguishes him, Ibsen has continued his efforts
without interruption, and during this time his fame has become
world-wide. No living dramatist has a name to be compared with
his. True, his position is contested, and his works are far from
meeting with unanimous admiration ; but he occupies the thoughts
of all his contemporaries, and what more can a productive spirit
require ?

It is well known that Henrik Ibsen completed his seventieth
year on the 20th March 1898. I have, in commemoration of this

7' iv

xvi AUTHOR'S PREFACE

anniversary, combined my first and second essays upon him with
a third, which brings my account of his poetic labours down to
our own day. By a stränge chance, I have happened, in the
course of rather more than a generation, to discuss him thrice, at
equal intervals of time. When I first wrote about him, he was
between thirty-eight and thirty-nine, the second time fifty-four,
and now he has lived to see a birthday that is remembered in
all civilised countries, and celebrated in many.

Those who, in foreign countries, have discussed Henrik Ibsen's
poetic career, have, as a rule, been able to make a general survey
of it before they wrote. They have not read the works in the
order, and at the intervals of time, in which they came into being ;
they have seen all the features of his physiognomy at once ; they
have had the whole fabric of his life-work before them, and have
deduced from it, as it were, a more or less correct picture of the
master-builder. It may at some future time be interesting to see
how the building was reflected in the mind of a contemporary
who saw it come into being, and who, at a comparatively early
time, was so situated as to be able, from his impressions of the
master-builder's personality, to say a few words of guidance to
students of his work.

G. B.

FIRST IMPRESSION

(1867)

HENRIK IBSEN

FIRST IMPRESSION

(1867)

It is by two polemical works that Henrik Ibsen's name has
chiefly become known to the Danish reading public. Dissimilar
as these are in respect of maturity and depth, they have, in com-
bination, inevitably given the public the impression that Ibsen's
nature is pre-eminently combative. In Lov^s Comedy^ on be-
half of beauty arid poetry, in Brandy on behalf of morals and
religion, he has declared war and gone out to battle against the
entire existing social Status — giving his attack, of course, a
special reference to Norway. In both poems the struggle is '
tragic. According to Ibsen, neither uncompromising passion nor /
uncompromising will can co-exist with existing society. These
spiritual forces must have air, and require room. Life has
no room to spare, and to procure it they :öeek to revolutionise
this Society that lies rotting in Stagnation. But the revolution
does not end in reform ; the " comedy " of love is really its
tragedy, and the drama of will ends in a martyrdom.

Whatever the merits or defects of his productions, it is clear
that we have here to deal with a poet who looks upon the life of
the present day with the eye of~a pessimist : Tiöt a pessimist in
the sense — the philosophico-poetic sense — that melancholy is his
muse, his work a lamentation over the hapless lot of humanity,
and his inspiration a deep sense of the tragedy inherent in the
mere fact of human existence ; but a pessimist whose pessimism
is of a moral charact er, akin t<! rTöiileHipi_aniIJiiflIgifiation. ile
does not bemoan, he indicts. His glooitiy way of looking at
things makes him, in the first place, polemical; for when he

4 HENRIK IBSEN

directs his gaze towards his own time, it presents to his eye sheer
misery and guilt, and shows him the discord between what ought
to be and what is. In the second place, it makes him bitter ; for
when he turns his gaze on the ideal, he sees its destruction as
inevitable, all higher living and striving as fruitless, and dis-
cord between \yhat ought to be, and what is, attainable. There
is a revolutionary element in these works. But why should all
these revolutionary endeavours be represented as failures ? One
possible answer is : because society has sunk far too low to allow
of its being raised ; a second is : because the champion of the
truth is himself involved in injustice and guilt ; a third : because
it is the destiny of truth and beauty only to shine forth for a
moment, like meteors that are extinguished as soon as they
touch the earth ; a fourth : because in Henrik Ibsen's poetic
spirit there is a peculiar bias that forces him to depict life in
just this manner. In the last analysis, however, there is no
pther answer than that he represents life as it presents itself
to him; that there is probably something in the innermost re*
cesses of his nature that compels him to represent and depict
life as a mighty but despairing struggle up towards the good ;
something in his eye that makes' his outlook black ; something
combative, rebellious^ violent, and melancholy deep down in his
being that is reflected in his works, and darkens even his love
for the light. /j

The correctness of this supposition may be put to the test.
If we wish to discover a secret, we observe the person concerned
in an unguarded moment, when he is unconsciously revealing his
innermost thought. The prisoner is aroused from slumber to
be examined ; he betrays himself most easily in the moment of
awakening. .Thus is it with the poetic individuality ; as it awakes,
it Catches involuntarily at a subject, a form, a personality, through
which it can express itself and obtain a hearing. Ibsen^s first
pqetic attempt, made while he was yet poring over his Sallust at
school, a grown-up scholar, backward in his studies but forward
in development, is a drama in which he, like Schiller in The
RobberSf has given vent to all the passion that can seethe in
a young, untried heart, boiling over with the wrath and love,
despair and ambitious self-esteem, of twenty years. Who do
you think is the hero of this boyish and immature production ?
No other than that enfant perdu Qf Roman society, to whose.

FIRST IMPRESSION (1867) 5

unbridled audäcity and unparalleled foolhardiness we owe our
first impressions of Ciceronian eloquence and our first know-
ledge of Latin syntax— in a word, Catiline. He is represented
as a heroic figure, a colossal and potent spirit, held, it is ti*ue,
in the grasp of mean instincts, but created for some great end,
towering iip above bis wretched, depraved associates in a miser-
able period of decadence, a " desperado " like Falk and Brand,
who, in bis burning enthusiasm for tbe grandeur of olden
days, raises the banner of revolution, and falls a victim partly to
treacher}»^, partly to bis own guilt, which he expiates in death.
Thus, even here, we already find the same pessimism (in the
view of Roman society), the same combative spirit, the same
overflowing pathos, the same desperate butting against a stone
wall.

The main impression, then, of this poet, which has been
received in Denmark, appears, although certainly one-sided, to
be essentially correct; and when we look at the facts that are
known about bis life, we find that they too are in keeping with
bis poetic character. We can understand that a life like bis may
have contributed to give to mental capacities of this magnitude
just that peculiar stamp which the poems exhibit.
; \// Henrik Ibsen was born on the 20th March 1828, at Skien,
y[/(\xi Norway, and in his sixteenth year was apprenticed to a
^/ chemist, but was seized with a desire to study medicine, and
prepared himself, in spite of difficulties, for his matriculation
examination. He was twenty-two when he passed it, and had
by that time " neither the means nor the desire " for professional
study. His circumstances were wretched ; for some time he
could not even afford to dine regularly. His youth was thus
severe and hard ; as a young man he did not see the bright side
of existence^ and his own life was not only an inward but an
outward stniggle» The transition is easy from hardness and
severity to fierceness, passionateness, and irregularity.

In 1850 Catilina appeared. In 1851 Ibsen began to edit a
weekly paper, for which he wrote lyrical and satirical pieces. In
the same year he was appointed stage manager of the newly
opened theatre in Bergen, and in 1852 he paid a short visit to
Denmark and Germany to study their theatres. In 1857 he be-
came artistic director of the Norwegian Theatre in Christiania, and
in the foUowing year he married his present wife, a step-daughter

6 HENRIK IBSEN

of the authoress, Magdalena Thoresen. The theatre having
faiied in 1862, Ibsen, after some time, left Norway, and since
then has generally lived in Rome. Before his departure he had
written a number of lyrical poems and a series of dramas. During
his connection with the theatre in Norway, he was the object of
constant attacks from the press ; and he seems on the whole to
be continually at war with his countrymen (see, for example, the
preface to the second edition of Love's Comedy), At home he
had . been obliged to struggle with poverty ; it was commonly
reported that in Rome he was in actual want at the time when
Brand appeared in Copenhagen.

That book marked the turning-point in his fate. As every
one is aware, the work, or rather its hero— for the idea of the
poem is not clear — preaches the doctrine that one should cast ofF
all worldly cares. The Norwegian people, with a delicacy of
consideration (and, apparently at least, of irony) with which
few, perhapTs, would have credited them, showed that they
appreciated the possession of a man, who, in the present day,
proclaimed truths such as these. They desired that this man,
freed from the petty cares of bread-winning, should continue
to proclaim so elevated a view. The Norwegian Storthing voted
Ibsen an annual grant, and thus a modest competency has for-
tunately been assured to the poet for the future.^

^ It appears from Jseger's biography of Ibsen (translated by Miss Clara Bell,
1890) that the govemment had granted him a **travelling stipend " before he left
Norway. Oddly enough, it was paid him by the " Ecclesiastical Department."

That which above all interests us in a poet of the present day is
the new thought that comes to life in him. Our first question is ;
'* Where lies his discovery ? what is his America ? " For a Single
great new poetical discovery we will forgive him much ; but if he
is to gain admission to our sympathy and admiration, he must
first of all be able to point to such an one. Our whole interest
in modern Norwegian literature is dependent upon this easily
explained circumstance. Nothing is more certain than that Nor-
wegian poetry, as regards rounded harmonious forfti, purity of
style, the repose which many-sided culture' alone gives to a poet's
work, is far inferior to the poetry which in Denmark concludes an
important literary period, rieh in all forms and branches of poetic
art. How great a leap it seems, how deep a fall, from the classical
finish of expression in Heiberg's or Paludan-Müller's best poems,
and Fru Gyllembourg's novels, to the mannerism of Björnson^s
earlier plays, or Fru Thoresen's strained and laboured prose. And
yet every one prefers these works to the ephemeral aftermath
which appeared in Norway as the immediate continuation of our
own literary movement. Although Norway needed Denmark as
an Interpreter and mediator between herseif and Europe, al-
though the common literature of the two countries has given
Norway her training and her artistic modeis, yet what we Danes
especially value and enjoy in Norwegian literature is, of course,
that which appears as the beginning of a new and independent
life. The first requisite for the awakening of our sister-country's
powers was that the flood of culture should flow so far north
that from Denmark it could spread with fertilising power over
Norway ; the next that, on the Separation of Norway from Den-
mark, and her consequent attainment of independence and political
freedom, this same flood should retreat, leaving behind it its ferti-
lising deposit. The poetical growth which then shot up has
attained its most delicate and beautiful development in the story,

8 HENRIK IBSEN

in Björnson's peasant-novels, but its highest significance in the
serious historical play«

Where now in Ibsen shall we seek for the new thought ? The
Danish public have leamt to know him as a polemist. If he were
nothing more, we could found no great hopes on him as a poet ;
a merely destructive spirit is not a poetical one. It is true that
every No contains a Yes ; it is true that in poetry something new
and original may once in a way appear in the form of a negative ;
but this has not been the case in the presont instance. We shali
endeavour to prove this assertion later on, and in the meantime
turn, as we naturally must, to Ibsen's positive productions, his
other dramas.^ If, however, we read these in their chronological
Order, and come to them with considerable expectations, we shall
most certainly be surprised and disappointed. We may read on
and on without being Struck by any new idea, without being
impressed by any new poetic vision. To teil the piain truth,
Henrik Ibsen has produced only one single drama that is at the
same time original and, in spite of faults in detail, thoroughly
successful ; but that one is of such importance, that it insures him
a high place among the poetic spirits of the north.

Henrik Ibsen is not one of the happy poets. A happy poet
is one who early, if not at once, discovers in himself a peculiar
fund of matter, of new themes, and, with each theme, a
beautiful and clear expression for everything that at that stage
of his development he is able to express. Such a poet will
probably, in course of time, be able to produce more important
works than his first, and, in accordance with the progress of his
mind, he will be able frequently to change the form or style of his
art ; but each of his works will be perfect of its kind, the less as
well as the greater, and they will all, in spite of their difFerences,
have two things in common — the impress of beauty and of the
poet's own spirit It is not so with Ibsen's plays and poems.
He makes Start after start, each, as it were, the run before the
leap that is to carry him into his promised land. But for a long
time it seemed as though this leap would never be taken. His
genius cannot come to rest ; it tosses about like a sick, restless
child ; now it searches within among its dreams and thoughts, but
does not find them clear or strong enough to be able to step

^ Other than Loves Comedy and Brandy that is to say, which Dr. Brandes classes
as ix)lemical and negative.

FIRST IMPRESSION (1867) 9

forth in vigorous nudity ; now it searches vvithout, finds a delicate,
spotless drapery, wraps itself in it so as to become almost
unrecognisable, seeks for a style, nay more, a language ; then it
throws away what it has found, realises at length that all borrow-
ing is pure loss, and labours until at last it finds its true seif.

Ibsen found himself when, after having written bis two
prentice works, Catilina^ in Danish iambic pentameters, and The
Feasi at Solhaug, in old ballad metre,^ he wrote, in 1857, for the
Christiania theatre, Lady Inger of Östraaty a historical tragedy in
prose, and in the year foUowing, 1858, The Vikings at Helgelandy
a dramatic adaptation of the ancient legend of the Völsungs. Both
of these are interesting works, the former especially so, although
neither possesses that strongly-marked originality which we subse-
quently find in him. Their individuality lies at any rate only in
their style and manner of presentation, which strive more and more
towards the attainment of grandeur and power, and not in their
ideas, which strike us as familiär, and which we seem to have met
with before, if nowhere eise, at least in the poet himself. He has a
pe culiar propensity for varying the same motive s. He goes ever
irther and farther into the depths — this is indeed the law of hisj
progress — but enlarges bis horizon less rapidly. His is rather a
deep than a comprehensive spirit. And he does not easily over-
come his adaptive tendency. We still find it in the last of these
works, The Vikings y which is indeed a new conquest, but 11 ke so
many conquests, associated with very extensive plundering. In
Order to gather characteristic and lively traits of ancient life for
his play, Ibsen has picked out effective bits from many difierent
songs and legends, and, as Goldschmidt once aptly expressed it,
has actually " scoured " the old sagas. When he is not adapting
from others, he adapts from himself. Look at his characters, for
instance. He is like the artist who always employs the same
model ; seated he is Brutus, Standing, Christian IV. ; in a chiton
he is Achilles, nude, he is Samson. It is a great convenience for
a poet to be what in former times was called subjectivey for then
he has always his model at band. In Lady I?iger of Östraaty we
find Ibsen's favourite type, with peculiar qualities, but still easily
recognisable. Vaguely, and in the widest signification of the
words, this type may be characterised as " the very devil of a
fellow," an expression which may be understood in both a good and

* And partly in prose.

lo / HENRIK IBSEN

a bad sense. The principal male character in Lady Inger is the
Danish knight, Nils Lykke, a man, as hiß name^ presages, ä
bonnes fortuneSy a Don Juan approaching middle age, like Catiline
irresistible, ambitious, and highly talented. As though to complete
the analogy, the poet has utilised afresh the fundamental motive
of Catilinay the punishment of the tardily converted libertine
through a love-affair with a girl who loathes and curses him,
because he has brought dishonour upon her sister, and laid her in
her grave. As with the characters, so with the relations in which
they stand — Ibsen reverts again and again to the same coh-
juncture.

He delights in placing a strong, richly endowed, fully

/developed masculine nature between two women, one fierce and
the other mild, one a mannish valkyrie or fury, and the other
tender, lovable, and of womanly gentleness. Thus he placed
Catiline between the terrible Furia and the gentle Aurelia, his
wife and guardian angel; thus he places Gudmund, in The
Feast at Solhaug, between the " Ragnhild " and " Regisse " ^ of
the play; and thus, in The Vikings^ he places the Sigurd of
the legend between Brynhild and Gudrun, or, as they are here
called, Hjördis and Dagny. In the same manner he afterwards
I places Brand between the wild woman, Gerd, his evil genius, and
I his wife, the delicate and feminine Agnes.

In Opposition and contrast to his hero, he then sets up a

jweak, subordinate, masculine character, first caricatured as Bengt

^y fin The Feast at Solhaug, but subsequently acquiring more and

■^ r ^^ more importance, and developing into the honourably human,

^^ ^^' the prosaically estimable man, who Stands to the demigod or hero

{^ -^ as the commonplace character to the genius — a beta who can

never become an alpha. Thus in The Vikings we find the brave,

honest Gunnar opposed to the romantic hero Sigurd, who does

not indeed, as in the legend, ride through the fire, but does fight

with the bear ; and thus, afterwards, in Love^s Comedy^ Guldstad,

the sensible merchant and good husband (to be) is opposed to the

ideal Pegasus-rider, Falk. But the one has the labour, the other

the reward. It is Gunnar and Guldstad, the pedestrian pair, who

win the two enchanted princesses whom the knights on horse-

^ ** Lykke** means luck or good fortune. The name, however, is historical.
2 Characters in Henrik Hertz's Svend Dyring's House. As to the relation
between this play and The Feast at Solhaugy see pp. 49 and 89.

FIRST IMPRESSION (1867) 11

back rescued. Even a Völsung name is found in the modern
poem : the Heroine is called Svanhild, and the legendary associa-
tions of the name are dwelt upon.

It cannot be denied that this poet piits his talent out at
Usance ; but we take a mistaken view of the matter if we see
nothing more in it than this ; for what is this circling around the
same fundamental thoughts, ^this deepening of the same tracks,
anH tliiR inrr^^jh^p oKtinarj in Jnvf^'itigatTng n narrow ränge _of^ i
great fu ndamental relatio ns — w hat is it but the poet^s ever deepe r /
absorpt ion in himselj ? OneTeels how he digs down into his
own inner being, and, like the treasure-seeker, little by little
loses interest in every other treasure than the one he is in search
of. And is he not always getting closer to it? The dullest
reader who compares these works will see that each fresh one
means an advance, that with each one of them Ibsen has gone a
Step, if not farther, at any rate deeper.

It is not difficult to place our finger on the interest which
directs his choice precisely to these subjects. One can see what
it is that attracts his mind, as by ties of kinship. We here find
our polemist once more. His ideal, like that of other recent
Norwegian poets, is one made up of greatness and strength,
of passion and will, and of will upborne by passion ; but it im-
poses a polemical attitude towards his contemporaries upon
this poet, who has never, like the writers of the peasant-story,
attempted to depict a vigorous present-day life. Strength of will i
is to him the really sublime ; it is that around which his thoughts 1
again circle in Brandy just as purity of will is always, for Paludan- | \
Müller, the centre around which everything tums.

Again, we find in all Ibsen's works the polemical poet's taste
for the tragical, and the restless melancholy by virtue of which
he seeks intensely thrilling incidents, and terrible, paralysingT
situations, in which great strength is wasted to no purpose. J
Take a Single instance : in Lady Inger^ the protagonist is a
woman of rare intellectual powers, placed in a high position,
at the head of her people, with all eyes resting upon her.
She is born to be the leader of this people's revolt, born to be
their deliverer from the dominion of tyrants. The sacredness of
the cause, the enthusiasm of her soul, her wisdom, her courage,
the vows of her youth, everything combines to incite or compel
her to act and conquer. But she is unable to stir, she dare not

HENRIK IBSEN

lift a band, for a son, the fruit of a secret, unlawful attachment,
is a hostage in the eneniies* power. Her fear for his life paralyses
her all her life through, and at last she herseif has him murdered,
taking him for another, and believing that this crime will save
him, and pave his way to the Norwegian throne. Like Hjördis
in The VikingSy she is most cruel to him she loves best. A
Situation such as that in which this woman is placed calls to mind
Puget's famous group of Milo defending himself against the
attack of the lion, but writhing in vain, without being able to use
his mighty strength ; for while one band is in the lion's mouth,
the other is held fast in a cloven tree, whence it is impossible
for him to wrench it loose.

Lastly, we find here, where nothing is entirely good, but
where powerful pathos, flashes of great thoughts, and a high
reflectiveness are never lacking, the same fundamental principle
which we learned to know in the polemical poems. There we saw
it as sparks from the fire of enthusiasm, and heard it as the
crack of the spirit's whip. But neither there nor here do we find
a Single, tranquil stream flowing direct from Nature's spring.

Then comes The Pretenders, The play appeared in 1864, and
thus Stands between the two polemical po ems. And what is it
that The Pretenders treats of ? Looked at simply, it is an old story.
We all know the story of Aladdin and Nureddin, the simple
legend in the " Arabian Nights," and our great poet's ^ incompar-
able poem. In The Pretenders two figures again stand opposed to
one another as the superior and the inferior being, an Aladdin and
a Nureddin nature ; for it was towards this contrast, with which
the poetry of the Century begins here in the North,^ that Ibsen
had hitherto unconsciously directed his endeavours, just as Nature
feels her way in her blind, preliminary attempts to form her types.
Hakon and Skule are pretenders to the same throne, scions of
royalty out of whom a king may be made. But the first is the
incarnation of fortune, victory, right, and confidence, the second
— the principal figure of the play, masterly in its truth and
originality — is the brooder, a prey to inward struggle and end-
less distrust, brave and ambitious, with perhaps every qualification
and Claim to be king, but lacking the inexpressible, impalpable
somewhat that would give a value to all the rest — the wonderful
lamp. " I am a king's arm," he says, " mayhap a king's brain as
well; but Häkon is the whole king." '*You have wisdom and
courage, and all noble gifts of the mind," says Hakon to him ;
"you are born to stand nearest a king, but not to be a king
yourself."

With Hakon the very reverse is the case. He is no abier
than the bishop, no bolder than Skule, but yet he is the greatest
man, For who is the greatest man? *'The boldest," says the
warrior; "the man of greatest faith," says the priest; but Bishop
Nicolas explains that it is neither of these : —

^ The Danish poet, Oehlenschläger.
^ Oehlenschläger's Aladdin appeared in 1805.

14 HENRIK IBSEN

" The most fortunate man ^ is the greatest man. It is the most
fortunate man that does the greatest deeds — ^he whom the cravings of
his time seize like a passion, begetting thoughts he himself cannot
fathom, and pointing to paths which lead he knows not whither, but
which he foUows and must follow tili he hears the people shout for joy,
and, looking around him with wondering eyes, finds himself the hero
of a great achievement."

So fortunate is Hakon« "Does not everything thrive with
him ? " cries Skule : —

" Does not everything shape itself for the best, when he is concerned ?
Even the peasants note it; they say the trees bear fruit twice, and the
birds hatch out two broods every summer, whilst Hakon is king.
Vermeland, where he burned and harried, Stands smiling with its houses
bullt afresh, and its cornlands bending heavy-eared before the breeze.
Tis as though blood and ashes fertilised the land where Hakon's armies
pass ; 'tis as though the Lord clothed with double verdure what Hakon
had trampled down ; 'tis as though the holy powers made haste to blot
out all evil in his track. And how easy has been his path to the
throne ! He needed that Inge should die early, and Inge died : his
youth needed to be watched and warded, and his men kept watch and
ward around him ; he needed the ordeal, and his mother bore the iron
for him."

What an Aladdin ! And yet he is something far more than,
something quite different from, Aladdin ; half a Century lies be-
tween him and Aladdin.^ He is more than the victorious favourite
of fortune, whose desire is one with its fulfilment, and whose be-
hests are always obeyed. He has something besides and beyond
good fortune, something stronger and higher than good fortune,
which therefore raises him above Aladdin. This something we
may for the present designate as the right. Right has no place
in Aladdin's sphere; when Aladdin is right, it is only because
he cannot be wrong. A concept so remote from unsophisticated
nature as "right," a concept so entirely the product of reflection,
so inseparable from civilisation and reality, could only by an
error on the poet's part be brought into relation to Aladdin.

^ Den lykkeligsle mand, The word lykke means not only luck or fortune, but
happiness. To render lykkeligste completely, we should require a word in which
the ideas "fortunate" and "happy" should be blent.

'^ Again, of course, an allusion to Oehlenschläger's hero.

FIRST IMPRESSION (1867) 15

Right is the outward manifestation of the good in a Community ;
not indeed the good itself, but its exterior aspect. The moral
idea, however, is far too fixed and hard to allow of its finding a
place in a poem like Aladdin ; it tears the poem to pieces wher-
ever it is thrown in, as a stone tears a fine, fluttering tissue of
threads. Heiberg has made this remark : '* The moral idea is
too heavy for the fairy-like, fantastic material that does not
yet . . • know the difference between good and evil." But in
The Pretenders we are within the historic domain, and have the
firm ground of reality beneath our feet The taste for the his-
torical in our day has succeeded to the bias in the immediate past
towards the symbolic-ideal ; the partiality for the strictly-ethical
(sometimes also for the narrowly-pietistic) has supplanted the
worship of beauty ; sympathy has turned from spiritual symbolism
to the life of action and achievement. Fortune is a concept be-
longing to the purely natural way of regarding life ; right carries
US at once into the ethical sphere. That speech, therefore, is a
most profound one, in which the evil genius of the play attempts,
by a Single word, to subordinate the moral to the purely natural
point of view.

" The right is Hakon's, Bishop," says Skule ; and the Bishop
replies : " The right is his, for he is the fortunate one ; His even
the sumniit of fortune^ to have the right. But by what right has
Hakan the rights and not you ? " What an utterance ! What
depths must there not be in the mind of the poet who can con-
ceive a thing like that ! At a Single turn of the wrist, in a flash
so rapid that the eye can scarcely foUow it, Morality is thrown
at the feet of Nature, the ethical dissolved in the metaphysical.
"With what right did he öbtain the right?" This question is
an attempt to get behind Morality, to attack it in the rear, kill it
from behind. But the feat cannot be thus achieved. Morality
puts on double strength, for the very question that would evade
right employs the word '* right." This one speech aifords us a
measure of the progress from Oehlenschläger's period to Ibsen's.

But we Said that right was only a provisional designation for
the something which Hakon possesses over and above the gifts of
Aladdin. It is even possible that he has not the formal right at
all. " But," exciaims Skule, " he himself believes it — that is the
heart of his fortune, that is the girdle of strength." One feels
that Ibsen has rated at its true value the high confidence änd

i6 HENRIK IBSEN

unswerving faith with which Hakon knows in his own soul that
he is the rightful heir. It is upon healthy self-reliance, that ideal
towards which the present generation aspires with longing and
struggling, and upon self-distrust, the gnawing worm of the age,
that the whole drama turns as upon its axis* The poet has given
US in Skule's monologues a masterly analysis of the restlessness
and tortures of self-mistrust. What are Nureddin's broodings
and doubts compared with this struggle? Nureddin is not a
person, not a soul, but a symbol. All Skule's struggles are soli-
tary wrestlings of his personality with itself, the fight to gain
faith, not in a supernatural, but in a natural sense.

The last, rather too personal, testimonial which Ibsen received
from Norway before he wrote The-Pr et ender s^ was the remark in his
biography, written by a friend in the Norsk Illustreret Nyhedsblady
that with all his gifts, he " lacked ideal faith and conviction." Be
this as it may, Ibsen seems to have taken this very failing as his
problem ; and it is evident that if it entered into his character, he
at least did not harbour it as a stranger, unkhown to himself.

Certain though it be that Skule is an inferior nature, it is im-
possible for him to rest content with this thought. His boundless
ambition cannot brook the idea that he has a superior. Hakon
must share the power with him. *' I am soul-sick, and there is
no other healing for me. We two must be equals ; there must be
no man over me." Power he must have on any terms. He calls
upon Hakon to divide the kingdom with him, or to take turns
with him in ruling ; he challenges him to single combat for the
supremacy ; he has staked his life on this thing. It is then that
Hakon's answer completely crushes him* Hakon's is no empty
confidence ; it rests upon an idea, on a thought for the future.

" Hakon, I was young and untried when I came to the heim — look
at me — all feil before me when I became king ; there are no Baglers,
no Ribbungs left !

^^ Duke Skule, That should you least boast of; for there lies the
greatest danger. Party must stand against party, claim against claim,
region against region, if the king is to have the might. Every village,
every family must either need him or fear him. If you kill dissension,
you kill your power at the same stroke.

** Hakon, And you would be king — you, who think thus ! Yoii had
been well enough fitted for a chieftain*s part in Erling Skakke's days ;
but the time has grown away from you, and you know it not See you

FIRST IMPRESSION (1867) 17

not, then, that Norway's realm, as Harald and Olaf built it up, may be
likened to a church that Stands as yet unconsecrate ? The walls soar
aloft with mighty buttresses, the vaultings have a noble span, the spire
points upwards, like a fir-tree in the forest ; but the life, the throbbing
heart, the fresh blood-stream, is lacking to the work; God's living
spirit is not breathed into it ; it Stands unconsecrate. / will bring
consecration ! Norway has been a kingdom^ it shall become d^peopU,
The Trönder has stood against the man of Viken, the Agdeman against
the Hordalander, the Halogalander against the Sogndalesman ; all shall
be one hereafter, and all shall feel and know that they are one !

" Duke Skule (impressed). To unite ? To unite the Trönders

and the men of Viken — ^all Norway ? {Increduiously,) 'Tis im-

possible ! Norway's saga teils of no such thing !

^^Hakon, For you 'tis impossible, for you can but work out the old
saga afresh ; for me, 'tis as easy as for the falcon to cleave the clouds."

This scene is certainly one of the most clearly conceived and
most deeply feit that any dramatic literature can exhibit.

After this spiritual defeat, Skule conceives the idea of appro-
priating Hakon's thought and putting it into action. With this
end in view, he has himself proclaimed king. It is Nureddin
stealing Aladdin's lamp. He fights, and to his own astonishment
wins ; but even after the victory he trembles, and scarcely dares
to believe in the possibility of the event which he knows to be
an accomplished fact. Thus Stands Nureddin with trembling
knees, the lamp falling from his band, at the very moment when
the genie appears, prepared to obey him unconditionally.

If Skule has no belief in himself, he feels, on the other band,

the deepest, most burning desire to have near him some one

who fully and absolutely believes in him, so that he may draw

strcngth from the other's confidence. For some time he seeks

in vain. Then the beloved of his youth brings him his son, and

in this son he finds what he seeks : limitless admiration, and a

filial devotion that is ready to believe everything. The son seizes

upon the '^ king's thought,'' understands its greatness, and con-

secrates his life to its realisation. But henceforth the curse of

guilt is upon Skule. All his battles end in defeat ; and his con-

science is yet further burdened when his son, carried away by

fanaticism, overleaps all barriers, and commits sacrilege. Then

it is that at length, deeply humbled, he Strips himself of all his

borrowed splendour, and confesses to his son that the "king's

i8 HENRIK IBSEN

thought " was Hakon's. And then he dies, reconciled to his fate,
together with his son.

When we are really touched by a poem, it is generally because
we silently transmute its substance into such forms as come home
to US intimately, familiarly. We translate it from its own language
into our personal mother-tongue. We are affected by Paludan-
MüUer's CatUy although none of us has committed fratricide. But
it is not of fratricide that we think as we read it. This is the case,
too, with the poet himself : he has often a more intimate personal
understanding of his work than that which it directly suggests.
In Tke Pretenders there is a masterly scene between Skule and
the skald whom he wishes to make his friend.

^^ King Skule. Have you many unsung songs within you, Jatgeir?

^^Jatgdr, Nay, but many unbom ; they are conceived one after the
other, come to life, and are brought forth.

" King Skule, And if I, who am king and have the might, if I were
to have you slain, would all the unborn skald-thoughts you bear within
you die along with you ?

^^ Jatgeir, My lord, it is a great sin to slay a fair thought

" King Skule, I ask not if it be a sin ; I ask if it htpossiblef

^^ Jatgeir, I know not.

^^ King Skule, Have you never had another skald for your friend,
and has he never unfolded to you a great and noble song he thought
to make?

^^ Jatgeir, Yes, lord.
• " King Skule, Did you not then wish that you could slay him, to
take his thought and make the song yourself ?

^^ Jatgeir, My lord, I am not harren ; I have children of my own.
I need not to love those of other men.

" King ^ule (seizes him by the arm), What gift do I need to become
a king ?

^^ Jatgeir, Not the gift of doubt ; eise would you not question so.

" King Skule, What gift do I need ?

^^ Jatgeir, My lord, yöu are a king.

^^ King Skule, Hsiyeyou at all times füll faith that you are a skald f"

How much this speech implies ! It reverses the Situation so
that the image becomes the substance and the substance the
image. What a painful confession lies in those last words:
" Have you at all times füll faith that you are a skald? "

FIRST IMPRESSION (1867) 19

The same idea of a spirit yearning to rise higher than its
powers permit, is presented under another guise in the monster,
Bishop Nicolas, whose great energies have been wasted in sheer
impotent coveting and craving. Notwithstanding the fact of this
Variation, however, Ibsen cannot, if we have rightly interpreted
the natural bent of his mind, have attained all at once to the
conception of Skule and his entanglements. The tragic Situation
of such a figure cannot all at once have presented itself to him in
such purity and grandeur. He must have made preliminary
attempts, must have modelled and grouped the figures in clay
before he chiselled them out in marble. Let us look back at The
Vikings in Helgeland. What attracted Ibsen to the mythic cycle
in general was, no doubt, its wildness and grandeur ; but he chose
this particular theme on account of the peculiar character of the
tragic conflict it presents. As we know, it is Sigurd who, in
Gunnar's armour, has slain the bear, and won Hjördis ; but no
one suspects this, and, noble and blameless as Gunnar is, he has
to conceal the truth, bear the bürden of honour for an exploit that
he has never performed or been capable of performing, and listen
to praises of his deed which, in Sigurd's presence, sound to him
worse than the bitterest contempt. As Skule is the plagiarist of
an idea, so Gunnar is the robber of an achievement, and it is his
tragic fate to sink beneath the bürden of this stolen achievement,
which, at the same time, he can by no means cast off. Thus we
see the Situation prepared in Ibsen's earlier work. It is taken up
as it were afresh in Brandy where the Mayor seizes on the priest's
idea of building the larger church. ^

The Pretenders is beyond question the work in which Ibsen \
has attained the greatest degree of perfection. In thus throwing
into relief its chief points, we have touched upon only a small
number of the extraordinary beauties of this drama. On its faults
WC will not dwell; they are not difHcult to discover, and havej
been pointed out before.

III

We have surveyed the series of Ibsen's plays, properly so called,
and we have appreciated the striving towards poetic originality
which runs through them all, but which attains essential success
only in the last. Let us now return to the two Ijrrical dramas.
Why do we not find in them the same originality as in The
Pretenders? Even if Lav^s Comedy (sometimes to its dis-
advantage) reminds us of The Inseparables^ yet the play has
in reality no prototype ; and no one can deny that Brand is a
poem which, by the novelty of its whole composition, took the
public by surprise, and conquered them at one blow. It is
perhaps wiser, however, not to attach too much importance to
a conquest like this; it does not necessarily speak in favour of
the poem. Every age has its weakness, often an exceedingly
grotesque one. That of our day in Denmark is the pietistic and
pessimistic moral tendency, which might well take for its motto
the not very tasteful lines from Brand —

" Dance, then — but where your dancing ends
Is quite another thing, my friends."

This tendency appears in good and bad works alike. It rings
in our poet's exhortations to an apathetic generation to brace up
their muscles ; but it is also that which, combined with an element
of sensual appeal, sets the stamp of the age on those descriptions
which in our day answer to the journeys " through the dens of
misery and the abodes of wretchedness." I wonder whether
Henrik Ibsen did not feel a little uncomfortäble, when Letters
from Hell seized the opportunity, and sailed forth in the wake of
Brand? But if the wide acceptance of the book is no proof of its
originality, it is at any rate no proof to the contrary. What
detracts from the originality in both the polemical poems is simply
this, that even if the ideas they express have not previously found

* A comedy by J, L. Heiberg.

FIRST IMPRESSION (1867) 21

utterance in poetry, they have done so in prose literature. In
other words, these poems do not set forth new thoughts, but
translate into metre and rhyme thoughts already expressed.
They both stand in direct relation to the thinker, who, here iiT^
Scandinavia, has had the greatest share in the intellectual educa- /(
tion of the younger generation, namely, Sören KierkegaardJ^^
Lov^s Comedyy although its tendency is in the opposite direction,
finds its points of departure in what Kierkegaard, in Either — Or
and Stages on the Path of Life^ has said for and against marriage.
And yet the connection in this case is very much slighter than in
the case of Brand, Almost every cardinal idea in this poem is
to be found in Kierkegaard, and its hero's life has its proto-
type in his. It actually seems as if Ibsen had aspired to the
honour of being called Kierkegaard's poet. But he has thereby
wronged his genius, taken a lower place than that which he has
been called to fill, reduced himself to a sort of coUaborator, a
Position for which he is in reality too great^

Independently of this circumstance, however, both Brand
and Lovds Comedy undoubtedly deserve the attention they have
aroused. Brand led the way.^ It was a book which left no reader
cold. Every receptive and unblunted mind feit, on closing the
book, a penetrating, nay, an overwhelming Impression of having
stood face to face with a great and indignant genius, before whose
Piercing glance weakness feit itself compelled to cast down its eyes.
What made the impression less definite, namely, the fact that this
master-mind was not quite clear and transparent, rendered it, on
the other band, all the more fascinating.

True poetry has the double property of exciting and soothing,
of rousing and reconciling ; its art consists in voluntarily sacri-
ficing beauty in order to gain in beauty. It is therefore certain,
on the one band, that a drawing-room poetry which ventures,
nothing, wins nothing ; but it is no less clear that even a glowing
rhetoric, which thrills one to the very marrow, and declares war
to the death on spiritual apathy, can never be more than one
Clement of poetry.

The poetic art desires war only for the sake of peace ; it lets
its forces wrestle with one another only to make the final harmony

^ Compare p. 70 of the present work, however. (Author's note in edition of 1898.)
' In introducing Ibsen to the Danish public — not in date of composition or
publication.

22 HENRIK IBSEN

all the more füll and decp and elevating. Merely soothing poetry
is in no danger of transgressing the limits of art ; it is always
occupied with antiquated ideals. Not so awakening poetry. It
Stands in very serious danger of producing so crudely personal,
so disturbing and aggressive an effect, that it may cease to give
the Impression of art. There is a very evident movement in this
direction in the poetic literature of Scandinavia. It begins with
Heiberg's A Soul after Death ; but in this poem the poetic^
humour was still faght, and the Standard aesthetic, not moral/
The next step is Paludan-MüUer's Adam Homo, Here the
seriousness is far greater, the jesting already much heavier in
its flight. In Henrik Ibsen's Brand all jesting has completely
vanished. In Ibsen bitter indignation is the one prevailing force.
Its heavy weapons permit of no distant skirmishing, but press hard
and pitilessly upon the age. The misfortune is not that poetry
here puts on a polemic character; that it already did when, in
Oehlenschläger's time, it defended its own cause against the
prose of a Philistine world. The misfortune is that in our day
poetry fights under the banner of a narrowly interpreted religion,
and often so uncompromisingly and exciusively that it appears
hostile to the whole imaginative life, whose glorified image it is.
Highly characteristic in this respect is Brandts forbidding Agnes
to let her fancy dwell upon the dead child.

But poetry affords no room for this self-contradiction. A
crisis cannot but supervene, in which much poetic genius will be
disintegrated into great, unharmonised talent, and during which
much poetic work will resolve itself into poetic Clements which
only in -the future our own or the next generation will be able to
master and mould into poetry of a higher order. This general
critical condition has found its especial victim in Ibsen, to whom
an unpropitious destiny seems to have allotted the task of serving
as the representative of polemical poetry, and recording turning-
points in development. And the reason of this is chiefly that
Ibsen, although he has already entered the period of mature
manhood, has not yet taken complete possession of himself as
a poet

Of this Brand gives manifold evidence. The first testimony
is furnished by its extemal form. One cannot but admire the
ease in versification, and the command of language that is required
to write so long a book from beginning to end in short rhyming

FIRST IMPRESSION (1867)

(21

*>*

lines (often rhyming trebly and quadruply), whose form admits of
no departure from the once accepted metrical scheme. But if we
pay doser attention to these rapidly thrown-off lines, we shall
find that it is with them as it is with the verses in Lov^s Comedy.
They have both Impetus and vigour; indeed, at their best the
true divine frenzy which, according to the dictum of the ancients,
denotes the poet: but the course lies as much over Stocks and
stones as if the Muse's cothurni were the actual red shoes of
Andersen's tale. We stumble now over an inelegant combina- 1
tion of words, now over an inappropriate simile, now over aiyl
expression that only incompletely clothes the thought ; and woi 1
have only this consolation, that we very quickly rise again. The
^bpoken doggerei Latin in the concluding lines affords an example: —

" Svar mig Gud, i dödens slug ; —
gselder ej et frelsens fnug
mandeviljens qvantum satis — f

En röst
Han er deus caritaHs / " ^

If we now add to this the fact that the dialogue, which in
some places is sublime in its simplicity, in others (for instance,
in the long colloquies between the Mayor and Brand) is unduly
diffuse, we cannot deny that the flowing diction, which is Ibsen's
strong point, is far from being controlled by a perfect sense of
unity in style and tone.

And as, on the whole, the pen has flown too fast in the poet's
band, so also his wrath, which in Byronic fashion is tumed
especially against his own countrymen, has sometimes run away
with him so as to impair the effect he would otherwise have
obtained. He has made the characters who zit the butts of his
Satire represent themselves with such open self-irony that they,

* Thus rendered by Professor Herford : —

** God, I plunge into death's night, —
Shall they whoUy miss Thy Light
Who unto man's utmost might

Will'd ?

A Vnce»

He is the God of Love. "
It should be said that the expression ''mandeviljens qvantum satis^* is first used
by the doctor in the third act of Brand, so that Brand is here simply quoting it, so.to
speak. Dr. Brandes cites with disapproxal smgther xouplet-from-^ra^^, but as it has
disappcared fronfrecent editions it need scarcely.be preserved in this place.

^..

24 HENRIK IBSEN

so to speak, give themselves one slap in the face after another.
For instance, the Mayor uses the expression : " I am visibly
moved," of himself, and between Einar and Brand in the fifth act
the foUoWing words are exchanged :

" Einar, ... I turned me thence
To preach for Total Abstinence ;
But since that Work for the unwary
Is strewn with perilous temptation,
I chose another occupation,
And travel now as Missionary

Brand. Where?

Einar. To the Caudate-Nigger State.
But now I think we'U separate ;
My time is precious

Brand. Won't you stay ?

You see here's festival to-day.

Einar. Thanks, no ; the swarthy Heathens wait.
Farewell."

By laying on the colour so thickly, the poet robs the figure of
its natural life. Stupidity and vileness have stirred in him an
indignation too strong and unqualified to be controUed. It is
the same with the enthusiasm that is the cause of his wrath, the
reverse side of his exasperation. In the hero of the poem the
enthusiasm could not be too strong or too ardent ; but it ought
not to have infected Ibsen himself to such an extent that he is
wholly and utterly carried away by his hero, whose one-sidedness
it is, after all, his purpose to condemn. Ibsen has conjured up a
spirit that he himself is powerless to control. He makes Brand
the mouthpiece for so many thoughts for the truth of which he
himself wishes to vouch, that one receives from his work the
impression that he is crying out to the world : " I feel that in
all this there must be a mistake, but where it really lies I am not
able to make clear either to myself or to others.*' For this reason
the last words of the poem carry with them no conviction ; for
Brand has beaten every objection out of the field, and has already
admirably refuted the charge which meets him at the moment of
his death, the Charge of not having understood that God is love.
For this reason an attack on Brand transforms itself all too easily
into an attack on the poet, who has not let his protagonist

FIRST IMPRESSION (1867) 25

meet either a hero wlio was truer, or an irony that was stronger,
than himself. Brand makes the greatest possible claims on
others, while he himself is in the very midst of his develop-
ment. He preaches the uttermost renunciation as a duty at the \
same time that he himself is taking a wife. He not only lacks
the cleverness, but also the wisdom, without which one cannot
whoUy serve the good. And all this the poet allows to pass
because he has allowed himself to be overawed by his hero. Not
even where Brand becomes almost comic, as the hardy Norse-
man who can neither weep nor feel cold — not even there is
irony allowed to seize its opportunity and clear up the mis-
understanding.

I am far from suggesting that the poet's own judgment should
follow close on the heels of the action like a running commentary
all through the play ; but presented as it is at last without any
motivation, it sounds like an unjustifiable decision. The words
in which it clothes itself, that God is love, have already been
employed by apathetic dulness ; and profound though the Obser-
vation be that temptation and grace may speak in the seifsame
terms, yet little is done to make clear the difference between them.
As a poetic idea, then, the fundamental thought lacks justification :
the poet has left the reader to form his own unaided opinion as
to the one-sidedness of the hero. Nor does the hero justify him-
self as a poetic ideal — where the poet has tried to produce the
impression that he is in the right, the reader is generally indignant
with him.

In aesthetic language, this deficiency is called the absence of
mbtivation. The lack of motive for an action, the absence of
plan, purpose, and object in it, may of course itself be motived by
the State of mind of the actor ; and this is partly the case when
Brand, in the last act, sets forth into the mountains with the
whole parish at his heels ; but far oftener in this poem the defi-
ciency of motive is simply an imperfection. It applies to the most
important as well as to less significant matters ; almost from
first to last we feel the lack of adequate motivation. We are
surprised when we come upon anything so deeply and satisfac-
torily motived as Agnes's application of the words : " Whoso
sees Jehovah, dies ;" for Ibsen has not accustomed us to anything
of the kind. Why is Brand, in the first act, in such desperate
haste ? How can he, in the fourth act, hope so much from

26 HENRIK IBSEN

having the church rebuilt ? These and many similar questions
receive no satisfactory answer. So deeply, indeed, is this want
of motive rooted in the soul of the poem, that it even, when it
takes the form of a lack of purely logical cogency, tempts the
intelligence to hypercriticism. Where Brand sacrifices his son,
the inhuman dilemma is not so sharply defined but that many
ways of evading it could be imagined — for instance, Brand him-
self might remain, while the child might be sent away to a milder
climate. The least poetical reader may here call the poet to
account.

What explains this weakness in the composition is the fact
that the poem is a poem of ideas. Traits which lack a motive do
not necessarily lack a reason. Most of them have their deeper
reason — their design — in the requirements of the fundamental
idea; and what may in itself seem rather a vague fancy (for
instance, the rebuilding of the church), cannot be rightly under-
stood until it is understood symbolically. The symbolism all
through is, indeed, deep rather than clear; but several of these
Symbols give such masterly expression to profound thoughts, that
for their sake one is reconciled to much obscurity. Among these
I class such traits as Brand's final engulfment in Nature's wild
ice-church — a church in which every one is in great danger of
ending who turns his back upon such spiritual churches as already
exist.

The success of Brand among the Danish public led Ibsen to
reprint the work which, in 1862, had appeared in Christiania under
the alluring but somewhat pretentious title of Lov^s Comedy.
The play has an advantage over The Inseparables in its larger
subject. It is more than a biting, searching satire on modern
betrothals and marriages ; it turns upon the nature and significance
of love itself; and the conclusion at which it arrives is that love
must of necessity be one of two things— either lasting, but a thing
of mere habit, or passionate, but like the flame of a moment, either
imaginary or hollow, either dead as a log or fugitive as a bubble.
This melancholy view of life saturates the play from Falkos first
despairing song, which, with the precision of a tuning-fork, strikes
fhe keynote of the whole, up to the bewildering final scene in which
the lovers, distrusting the durability of their passion, and its fitness
to form the basis of a marriage, separate almost at the very
moment when they have found each other. There is about as

FIRST IMPRESSION (1867) 27

much and as little justification here as in Brand. The polemical
tendency robs the play of the character of a drama ; there is no
action in it, there is declamation ; there is no conversation, but
hissing and lashing ; there is no fighting with the polished, shining
swords of Speech, but with its heavy ordnance, whose voUeys are
more noisy than eüective. The hero is an Erasmus Montanus ^
of the first water, and we sadly miss the corporal's staff. These
are true, deep words that his lady-love addresseis to him : —

" I saw in you no falcon,^ but a kite,
A poet-kite, a paste-and-paper thing,
Wingless itself, and impotent for flight,
While all its virtue centres in its string.
Thus you lay powerless at my feet and whined :
* Oh, set me soaring, one way or another !
Defy your sister and ignore your mother,
But help my songs and me to breast the wind ! ' "

In these words lie the possibility and germ of a radical change
in Falk's character, but the possibility is not realised, and the
germ of better things is stifled. Neither the play of intellect and
wit with which the poem sparkies, nor its wealth of ingenious
similes, striking points and catchwords, nor the epigrammatic "^

terseness of its dialogue, can prevent the reader from Standing on
his guard against its breaches of true refinement and healthy
feeling. On the contrary, they only keep him alive to the necessity
for caution.

* The hero of one of Holberg*s greatest comedies. The " corporars staff," in
the last Act, drubs him into conformity with the beliefs of his day and his village.
» The hero's name, "Falk," means " falcon."

One source of most of the imperfections of the later Norwegian
school of poetry is its will to do too much. A definite artistic
effort engrosses the Imagination; one is conscious of too much
exertion and purpose. Many great artists have really " willed "
nothing at all; they have written, painted, and composed as
Mozart composed when he wrote Don Giovanni. In Ibsen the
supremacy of the will is apparent in the part that reflection plays
in his writings; for with him reflection is the medium through
which the will works upon the Imagination. I have often, in the
preceding pages, been compelled to use the word " thought," when
my purpose was to emphasise the poetical dement in Ibsen. It
does not speak in a poet's favour when there is a frequent necessity
for employing this word. Poetry always seems to come to him as
material which does not bring with it its form, but for which a
form must be deliberately chosen; his principal figures are in-
camate ideas, and the sign of deficient Inspiration in his works
is always that the figure will not round itself to many-sided
organic nature. We instinctively long for a stereoscope, in order
to see these figures properly. Ibsen's propensity for the abstract
and symbolical is due to this limitation of his talent. In the first
place, it is the origin of the abstract figures in his dramas, which
are merely emblematical p)ersonifications of a single quality in
human nature. Already in his first work, Catilina^ Furia is a
S3mibol compounded partly of one side of Catiline's own character,
partly of another nature ; and Gerd Stands in the same relation
to Brand. The fact that Bishop Nicolas in The Pretenders is
represented as such an abstract and inhuman incärnation of evil
scarcely arises, as has been supposed, from a desire on the poet's
part to thrill the nerves, but from his inability to resist the inclina-
tion to expand the figure from a person to a principle.

In the second place, this limitation of Ibsen's talent introduces
something dry, thin, and schematic into his method of composition.

FIRST IMPRESSION (1867) 29

He finds it difficult to avoid a certain dead symmetry, and some-
times he is imprudent enough himself to reduce his characters to
ideas, thus giving the impression of a dance of death in which the
personages have suddenly lost their flesh and blood, and become
mere naked skeletons. Look, for instance, at the conclusion of
the first act of Brand: —

" Which wildest real, which blindest grope,
Which furthest roam from home and hope : —
Light-heart^ who, crowned with leafage gay,
Loves by the dizziest verge to play, —
Faint'heart^ who marches slack and slow,
Because old Wont will have it so ; —
Wild-heart who, borne on lawless wings,
Sees fairness in the foulest things ?
War front and rear, war high and low,
With this feil triple-banded foe ! "

How the lovers, the peasant, and Gerd herseif dwindle down
at these words into three naked categories !

Lastly, its preponderant reflectiveness gives to Ibsen's
dialogue its striking and powerful, but sententious character.
Speeches such as the following are significant: "Sing? Nay,
nay; yesterday I could sing; I am too old to-day!" (Örnulf in
The VikingSf Act iv.), or, "A man can die for another's life-
work, but if he is to go on living, he must live for his own"
(Skule in The Pretenders^ Act v.). Ibsen has many such char-
acteristic sentences; but on the other band he has not infrequently
marred his works by Speeches that seem to come from a spectator
rather than an actor. In these the reflectiveness is feit to be
nothing less than a disease. And even where Ibsen does not go
to extremes, as in the Mayor's and Einar's speeches in Brandy he
with difSculty avoids letting the characters utter sentences that
are far too general, self-conscious, and suitable to a thousand
occasions, when one would expect them to be exclusively taken
up with what is happening to themselves personally, to them
alone, in this particular Situation.

Look at this fragment of dialogue from The Pretenders : —

^^ King Skule, Every fair memory from those days have I wasted
and let slip.

^^ Ingeborg. It is man's right to forget

30 HENRIK IBSEN

^^ King Skule, And meantime^'^ Ingeborg, loving, faithful woman,
have sat there in the north, guarding and treasuring your memories, in
ice-cold loneliness !

^^ Ingeborg, It is woman's happiness to remember/*

This, if sententious, is still beautiful ; but the poet reveals all
too distinctly what he wants us to learn from this meeting when
he afterwards makes Ingeborg leave the stage with these words,
which she says to herseif: —

"71? lovCy to sacrifice ally and be forgotten^ that is woman^s sagaJ^ ^

Happily, however, there are certain spots in Ibsen's poetic
domain into which self-conscious reflection does not enter; he
sometimes succeeds in grasping humanity in such living forms,
that he satisfies every demand, even the most extreme, for feality
and individual life. He is especially successful in his female
iigures; it almost seems as though woman's character, being
more closely allied than man's to the mysterious, maternal element
in nature, offers a greater resistance to his disintegrating reflec-
tion. Again, he portrays filial aifection excellently, perhaps
because this too, as something simply and directly natural, wears
in his eyes a sort of noli me tangere aspect, which he has dis-
regarded only once, in depicting Brandts relation to his mother.
He has beautifully embodied filial reverence, with a very few
touches, in the youthful figure of Nils Stenssön in Lady Inger
of Östraat, Brought face to face with a mother such as his, Nils
suddenly feels himself insignificant and ignorant ; the determina-
tion to be worthy of her changes him in the twinkling of an eye
from a boy to a man. In The PretenderSy Peter's reverence for
his royal father is depicted with great feeling, as also the beautiful
relation between Hakon and Inga, who is so proud of her "great
son." And yet it is perhaps possible, both in these pictures of
natural affection and in several of Ibsen's delineations of love, to
trace the poet's reflection, developed at the expense of feeling.
Very frequently when Ibsen depicts love, whether between son
and mother, son and father, or two lovers, the love is strongly
mingled with admiration. Woman's love, with him, is apt to be
love of a man's fame (Eline in Lady Inger ^ HjÖrdis in The Vikings,

' Ibsen has, in later editions, modified these speeches. Ingeborg now says : " It
was your right;" "It was my happiness;" and "To love, to sacrifice all, and be
foi^otten, that has been my saga."

FIRST IMPRESSION (1867) 31

Ingeborg in The Pretenders) ; but even if admiration is an element
in all love, especially in nineteenth Century love, and in love as
the nineteenth Century represents it, and above all in woman's
love, yet admiration is precisely head-love rather than heart-love ;
in real, natural love, untainted by reflection, admiration, as such,
has not yet come to the surface at all. Juliet does not admire
Romeo. Be this as it may, however, Ibsen has in more than one
instance represented the unmixed emotion and passion, in its un-
fathomable depths and its inscrutably elevated enthusiasm.

Here are a few examples, \ the first from Lady Inger of
Östraat The second scene of Act iii., the conversation between
Nils Lykke and Eline, contains, in spite of a few tasteless touches,
a delineation of the birth of love in a woman's heart, that is
simply admirable in its truth. The young girl hates with all
her proud nature the man who Stands before her ; at any rate
she ardently wishes to hate him ; but at every speech love rises
higher in her heart, fills it and deepens it The scene ends thus : —

" Nils Lykke, We shall meet no more ; for before daybreak I shall
be gone. So now I bid you farewell.

" Elina. Fare you well, Sir Knight !
{A Short silence,)

" Nils Lykke. Again you are deep in thought, Elina Gyldenlöve !
Is it the fate of your fatherland that weighs upon you still ?

" Elina (shakes her head, absently gazing straight in front of her),
My/atherland ? I think not of my fatherland.

^^ Nils Lykke. Then 'tis the strife and misery of the time that cause
you dread.

" Elina. The time ? I have forgotten time. . . . You go to Den-
mark ? Said you not so }

" Nils Lykke. I go to Denmark.

" Elina. Can I look towards Denmark from this hall ? "

Thus does love speak.

An example from The Pretenders. Hakon is chosen king. As
king, he is forced to part from Kanga, his paramour, and to take
a wife. Statecraft bids him choose Margrete, Skule's daughter,
who, as it happens, has long loved him secretly. Can anything
be more beautiful than these speeches : —

^^ Hakon {warmly). Earl Skule, to-day have I taken the kingdom
from you ; let your daughter share it with me !

32 HENRIK IBSEN

" Earl Skule. My daughter I

" Margrete. Oh God !

" Hakon. Margrete, will you be my Queen ?

{Margrete is siient)
" Hakon (takes her hand), Answer me.

" Margrete {softly), I will gladly be your wife.

• ••••■••

^^ Hakon (approaching Margrete), A wise queen can do great
things in the land : I have chosen you fearlessly, for I know you are
wise.

^^ Margrete, That only ! ^

" Hakon, What mean you ?

" Margrete, Nothing, my lord, nothing.

" Hakon, And you will bear me no gnidge if for my sake you have
had to let slip fair hopes.

" Margrete, I have let slip no fair hopes for your sake.

^^ Hakon, And you will stand ever near me, and give me good
counsel ?

" Margrete, I would fain stand near to you.

^^ Hakon, And give me good counsel. Thanks for that ; a woman's
counsel profits every man, and henceforth I have none but you — my
mother I have sent away

" Margrete, Ay, she was too dear to you

" Hakon, And I am King. . . .

" Margrete {smiles sadly), Ay, I know 'twill be long ere you send
me away.

" Hakon (prightly). Send you away ? That will I never do !

" Margrete {with tears in her eyes), No, that Hakon does only to
those who are too dear to him."

But beautifui as this picture is, neither it nor any other is so
remarkable as the representation in Brand of a mother's love for
her dead child ; all its mysteries, so impenetrable to the ordinary
man, its poetry, its almost frenzied worship, Ibsen has unveiled
with a truth that is the more impressive because this poem, in the
rest of its design, is so destitute of love. Agnes's poring over
the little dead boy's clothes, or everi more, the scene in which she
places the candle in the window, so that its light may fall across
the snow upon his grave, and give the little one a gleam of Christ-
mas comfort, is itself like a bright, shining window whence warmth
falls upon the poem's snow-field, or like a clear, sparkling eye
that animates a pale and coldly serious countenance. One is

FIRST IMPRESSION (1867) 33

tempted to exclaim, *' Have you been a woman in some other life,
since you thus know a woman's heart ? ''

These female figures augur well for Ibsen's future ; they are
prophetic of " life's summer-lands/' towards which Brand, even in
death, so eamestly yearns, and which we heartily trust the poet
may reach. But to this end it will be necessary for him to get
clear of the track on which he has entered in writing Lov^s
Comedy and Brand.

The above was already written when Peer Cynt appeared. This
book foUows all too closely in the footsteps of the two polemical
dramas. Its point of departure and the narjae of its chief char-
acter are taken from an old Norwegian folk-story. Among
Asbjörnsen's fairy-tales there is a story which may be Condensed
as follows : In olden days there was a hunter named Peer Gynt,
who was continually up in the mountains shooting bear and elk.
Once, late in the autumn, he was going to the mountains. All
the people had by that time left the upland pastures and gone
home, with the exception of three saeter-girls, who were keeping
Company with the trolls. When he came nearly up to the
saeter where he was going to spend the night, it was so dark
that he could not see his band before bis face, and the dogs
barked so incessantly that it was quite eerie. Suddenly he ran
against something, which, when he touched it, was cold and
slippery and big; he did not know what it was, but it was cer-
tainly uncanny. " Who's that ? " he said. " Oh, it's the Boyg,"
was the answer. Peer Gynt was none the wiser for this ; however,
he went a little to one side of the hobgoblin, thinking he must
be able to get round it. But in vain. He again runs into some-
thing, which, when he touches it, is once more big and cold and
slippery. The same question, the same answer. Once more he
attempts to get round it, and once more he receives this answer
to his question, "Oh, it's the great Boyg." Peer shoots and
dislodges the hobgoblin with his shot, though without injuring
it. The same Peer goes through many a combat with trolls and
goblins ; he drives away the trolls living with the before-mentioned
saeter-girls, he rids a farm on the DovreQeld of trolls ; and for the
rest it is said of him that " Peer Gynt had not his equal as a
romancer and story-teller. He always declared that he himself
had taken part in the adventures that people said had happened
in olden days." Out of these and many other little touches

FIRST IMPRESSION (1867) 35

Ibsen's drama has developed, and one cannot but frequently admire
the deep and yet obvious meaning and coherence the poet has
managed to give to materials which, in tbe folk-story itself, have
very little meaning, and are combined at random.

The object of Peer Gynt is onee more to represent the moral
nature of mankind from its seamy side. The hero, like a scape-
goat, is laden with every human baseness, only that the general
weakness and worthlessness is here mainly represented by a
Single vice, namely, that of seeking to romance oneself away from
life, or life away from oneself, and trying by the aid of fancies to
'' get round " all serious and vital things, until one's character
is hardened and ossified in egoism. That which is described as
a disease in Schack's Visionaries, is here condemned as a sin.

\ \ What Ibsen here wishes to deal a blow at is the disposition

so much talked and written about since Goethe's time, to hold
real life aloof through the power of imagination — the tendency
defined by Kierkegaard as "the natural and sensual man's
method of parrying the ethical claim." Peer Gynt himself is
the incarnation of cowardly egoism in the guise of self-deception
and falsehood. Like Adam Homo,^ he sinks ever lower, and at
last only obtains salvation — a very doctrinary trait — through a

^* woman, in whose love, trust, and hope he has always, in spite of

all his vileness, existed in his ideal nature.

What great and noble powers are wasted on this thankless
materiall Except in the fourth act, which has no connection
with what goes before and after, and is witless in its satire, crude

in its irony, and in its latter part scarcely comprehensible, there

'^ -^ is almost throughout a wealth of poetry and a depth of thought,

^ such as we do not find, perhaps, in any of Ibsen's earlier works.

The first act is a beautiful, vivid, and enthralling exposition,

in which the half symbolical, half allegorical marvels with which

\ the book is afterwards burdened are totally absent. There is a

strength of imagination and a real humour in this act which carry

one with them, and pique one's curiosity as to what is coming.

The second act is weaker, but yet has gveat lyrical beauties. The

third is whoUy beautiful; there is powerful imagination, deep

feeling, and a note of mournful romance in the description of

Solveig's arrival at the settler's hut, and in the affecting present-

ment of the mother's death. The fifth act has yet another poetic

^ In Paludan-MüUer's poem of that name.

36 HENRIK IBSEN

pearl of great price in the priest's funeral discourse at the grave
of the poor fellow, Peer Gynt's antithesis, whose horizon was so
namow, but who did his duty like a man within bis allotted spbere ;
and tbis act bas every bere and tbere remarkably profound and
beautiful passages, sucb as tbe scene in wbicb Peer Gynt peels
tbe onion, tbat in wbicb the voices around bim remind bim of
what he sbould have done, and others too numerous to mention.
But tbe allegory bas so fatally sapped tbe power of tbe poetry,
tbat even masterly details can scarcely assert tbemselves in tbe
midst of all tbe indistinctness and unintelligibility.

It would be unjust to deny eitber tbat tbe book contains great
beauties, or tbat it teils us all, and Norwegians in particular^
some important trutbs ; but beauties and truths are of far ^kss ^
value than beauty and trutb in tbe singular, and ^bspn'^ poem
is neitber beautiful nor true. Contempt for hUihaniitY and self-
hatred make a bad foundation on wbicb to build a poetic work.
What an unlovely and distorting view of life tbisiis ! Wbat acrid
pleasure can a poet find in thus sullying humaü nature ? Tbis
kind of endeavour must one day reach tbe end of its tetber.
Taine bas somewbere remarked, in Opposition to all sucb poetical
moralising, " Man is not an abortion or a monster, nor is it tbe
mission of poetry to revolt qr defame men. Our inborn human
imperfection is part of the order of tbiiigs, like the constant defor-
mity of tbe petal in a plant ; what we consider a malformation is a
form ; what seems to us the Subversion of a law is tbe fulfilment
ofalaw."

Tbis means tbat the poet bas anotber mission than tbat ,of
libelling human nature, as Ibsen does in tbe fourth act of this
poem. It further means tbat tbe poet bas anotber mission than
tbat of being a moralist. He must, indeed, have his philosophy,
even if it be not philosophically formulated ; but his very philo-
sophy will forbid bim to moralise. Tbe moralist is a man who
sets to work with a Single ultimate object, moral improvement, in
view^ and therefore confines his attention whoUy to a single side
of life. Tbe moralist, for instance, is tbe man who founds tem-
perance leagues, and who thinks he bas won a victory when be
bas succeeded in rooting out tbe one propensity against which be
bas declared war. The philosopber, on tbe contrary, is tbe man
who, if he bas bis attention directed to tbe injurious eifects of
over-indulgence in alcobol, will first consider whetber alcobol is^

FIRST IMPRESSION (1867) 37

not a necessity for the lower classes, a means of forgetfulness
such as we others have in science and art, and whether, if it is
abolished, its place will not be taken by other, perhaps much
more stupefying Sfid maddening stimulants, experience having
taught him that nS nation can entirely dispense with such things.
Well, as Ibsen himself says in Peer Gynt, " Some take to brandy,
and others. to lies " ; the poet who continues so long to stare at
falsehood, self-deception, and fantasy, that at last he almost
blindly runs amuck against it, is, from the poetic point of view,
only a moralist. Were he a philosopher, as a poet ought to be,
ftistead of fighting like a berserk against self-delusion, he would
have assigned to fantasy its proper place in the economy of human
life, and would have seen that Illusion, besides being a dangerous
and pemidous power — which will be readily granted — is, to a
certain extent, in the first place unavoidable, and therefore neces-
sary, in the second place beneficial, comforting, and beautiful —
as, for instance, the Illusion that the sky is blue, not black — and
therefore in a double sense necessary. But, for the present, Ibsen
feels it neither his pleasure nor his duty to take such a view ; he
is no longer in his element except as a polemist.

*^^**^iB>^iBi>va>

SECOND IMPRESSION

(1882)

SECOND IMPRESSION

(1882)

When Henrik Ibsen, at the age of thirty-six, left Norway to go
into the exile from which he has not yet retumed, it was with a
gloomy and bitter mind, after a youth spent on the shady side of
life. At the time of his birth, in the little Norwegian town of
Skien, his family was in a position of precarioiis affluence. Both
his parents belonged to the most respected families in the town ;
his father was a merchant in a varied and extensive business, and
was fond of showing unlimited hospitality. But in 1836 he failed,
and nothing was left for the family except a country property
in the vicinity of the town, Thither they removed, and thus
dropped out of the circles to which they had previously belonged.
In Peer Gynt, Ibsen has used the circumstances and recollections
of his own childhood as a kind of model in the description of the
life in the wealthy John Gynt's household. His home seems to
have had no great attraction for hin).

Although these conditions mean less in so poor and democratic
a country as Norway than they would elsewhere, and although
Ibsen does not seem to have lacked either the youth*s or the
poet's faculty of rising above adverse reality by virtue of enthusiasm
for ideas and an independent imaginative life, yet early poverty
always sets its mark on the mind. It may breed submissiveness,
or it may develop germs of revolt ; it may render a man ill at
ease, or self-reliant, or hard for his whole life. lipon Ibsen's
solitary, cömbative, and satirical nature, more calculated to im*
press than to prepossess his surroundings, it must have acted
as a sort of challenge. It probably rendered him ill at ease in
Society, and produced in him some ambition in the direction of

4«

42 HENRIK IBSEN

external badges of honour that should place him on an equal foot-
ing with the class with which, as a youth, he did not associate,
together with an overpowering feeling of being completely thrown
upon himself and his own resources.

Ibsen, who, in the course of years, has grown so staid, and
whose days pass with the regularity of clock-work, is said to have
lived a somewhat irregulär life as a young man, and was there-
fore pursued by that ill-repute, which even a trifling irregularity,
especially when it is the irregularity of genius, calls forth in
little places where nothing can pass unseen. I can imagine
Ibsen in his early manhood, worried by creditors, and daily
executed in effigie by the moral censorship of tittle-tattling
cliques. He had written no small number of beautiful poems,
and a series of dramas that are now famous, and some of
them among the most admired of his works; but they were
published in Norway, in hideous editions, on bad paper, sold
to the number of a few hundred copies, and earned for the
poet, even on the part of his friends, only a tolerably frigid
acknowledgment of his talent. He grew tired of Norway.
In 1862, foUowing the polemical and sarcastic bent of his
nature, he had published Love^s Comedy, which united a cutting
scorn for Philistine erotics, with a profound distrust of the sus-
taining power of love through the changes of a lifetime, and
strong doubt of its ability to retain its ideality and enthusiasm
unimpaired and unchanged throügh wedded life. It could not be
unknown to the poet that society, with all the insistence begotten^
of the instinct of self-preservation, had made confidence in the
unchangeableness of normal and healthy love an obligatory article
of faith ; but he was young and defiant enough to give a qualified
sanction to the most commonplace conception of marriage in the
Union of Guldstad and Svanhild, rather than refrain from ex-
pressing his doubts as to the orthodox conception of love. The
book evoked a howl of exasperation. People were furious at
this attack on the amatory institutions of society — engagements,
marriages, and so forth. Instead of taking it to themselves, they
began, as is customary in such cases, to search into Ibsen's
private life, and investigate the nature of his own marriage. As
Ibsen once put it to me : the printed criticism of the comedy
,might have been borne at a pinch, but the oral and private
criticism was absolutely intolerable. Henrik Ibsen was con-

SECOND IMPRESSION (1882) 43

demned as a talented mauvais suJet. Even a work of such
excellence as The Pretenders^ which foUowed in 1864, failed |
to rehabilitate the poet's nanie. It was not, I believe, quite
inappreciatively judged by the critics, but neither was it esti-
mated at its proper worth, and it made no stir. I do not think
twenty copies of it came to Denmark ; at any rate it was Brand
that first made the poet's name known out of Norway. The
foregoing essay, of 1867, was the first connected account ever
published of his career as a poet. To Henrik Ibsen's private
grounds for despondency was added a feeling of profound dis-
satisfaction with Norway's political attitude during the Dano-
German war. In 1864, in spite of the promises given at the
great assemblies of students, and reiterated by the Scandinavian
party in the press — pledges which Ibsen had regarded as obligatory
— Norway and Sweden declined to assist Denmark against
Prussia and Austria. For all these reasons,. his native country,
which seemed to him the abode of pettiness, apathy, and faint-
heartedness, became so hateful to him, that he turned his back
upon it.

Since then he has lived by turns in Italy, in Dresden, in
Munich, in Italy again, and again in Munich — passing from five
to seven years at a time in each of the German towns. But he
has had no permanent abode. He has led a quiet, regulär, family
life ; or rather, within the setting of a family life, he has found his
real life in his work. He has associated in public places with the
leading men of his places of sojourn, and has received numbers of
migratory Scandinavians in his house ; but he has lived as in a
tent, among pieces of hired furniture, which could be sent back
on the day appointed for his departure. Since 1864, ^^ ^^s not
had his feet under his own mahogany, nor slept in his own bed.
He has never, in the stricter sense of the word, settled down ; he
has accustomed himself to feel at home in homelessness. When
I last visited him, on my asking whether nothing at all in the flat
he occupied belonged to him, he pointed to a row of pictures on
the wall: they were the only things that were his own. fiven
now, when he is a wealthy man, he feels no longing to possess a
house and home, and still less a farm and lands, like Björnson.
He is separated from his people; he has no work that connects
him with any institution or party — not even with a magazine or

HENRIK IBSEN

newspaper*--at home or abroad. He is a solitary man. And in
bis Isolation be writes : —

" My countrymen, wbo poured in draugbts unsparing
The wholesome, bitter tonic-drink wberetbrough,
Tbough sick to death, I nerved myself anew

To face tbe figbt of life with steadfast daring —
My countrymen, I send you greeting ! — you,

Wbo lent me Fear's wing'd sandals for my faring,

Wbo lent me Exile's staflf and Sorrow's pack —

Lo ! from afar I send you greeting back."

He sent many and weigbty greetings. But all bis productions,
both before and during bis exile, bear one and tbe same stamp,
tbe stamp of bis natural disposition, unrestrained and grim. 7^
Tbis fundamental mood, so natural in tbe bomeless, comes to tbe
surface wbenever Ibsen is most effective. Let us call to mind a
few of bis most peculiar, and indeed most dissimilar productions.
Tbink of tbe poem On the Uplands, in wbicb tbe Speaker, from
bigb up on tbe mountains, sees bis motber's cottage burning, witb
ber inside, wbile be bimself, will-less and despairing, sits noting
tbe picturesque eifect of tbe flames amid tbe moonligbt ; tbink of
Home LifCf wbere tbe poet's creatures of fancy, bis winged
cbildren, take fligbt as soon as be sees bimself in tbe mirror
witb blue-grey eyes, close-buttoned jacket, and feit slippers;
tbink of tbe grimly tbrilling poetry of tbe scene wbere Brand
wrests from bis wife tbe clotbes of tbeir dead cbild; tbink of
tbe passage wbere Brand lets bis motber go to bell, and tbat
scene, so admirable in its profound originality^ wbere Peer Gynt
lie^ bis motber into beaven; tbink of tbe poem, A Corpse in
the CargOy or of tbe paiufuUy intense impression produced by A
DolVs House^ wbere we see a butterfly wbo, tbrougb tbree acts,
is pricked witb a needle, at last transfixed by it — if we tbink of
all tbese tbings, we perceive tbat tbe fundamental mood, answer-
ing to a painter's landscape back-ground, is, in all tbe patbetic
parts, an intense grimness. It may rise to terror, to tragedy,
but it is not primarily due to tbe fact tbat tbe poet is a
tragedian. Scbiller's and Oeblenscbläger's tragedies are only
occasionally grim, and even tbe writer of King Lear and Mac-
beth bas written barmoniously tender tbings, like A Midsummer
Nighfs Dreant or The Tempest. But witb Ibsen tbe mood of

SECOND IMPRESSION (1882)

grimness is always the underlying one. It would naturally
arise in a born idealist, who from the very first thirsted for
beauty in its highest forms — ideal, intellectual beauty — and in
a born rigorist, who, being thoroughly Germanic and peculiarly
Norwegian in disposition and temperament, and subject, more-
over, to the religious influences of his surroundings, was inclined
to regard the life of the senses as ugly or sinfuT, and seriously to
admire or acknowledge no beauty save moral beauty. At bottom
he was shy, that is.to say, so constituted that it did not require
many disappointments to make him shrink into himself, with his
heart füll of distrust of the world around him. - How early he
must have been wounded, repulsed, humbled, as it were, in his
original inclination to believe and to admire ! His first deep impres-
sion as an intellectual individuality must, I imagine, have been the
Impression of the rarity — or non-existence as he probably put it
in bitter moments — of moral worth ; and disappointed in his search
for beauty, he doubtless found a sort of solace in unveiling every*
where the sad truth that lies behind appearances. The air
around him resounded with words that expressed ideals; they
spoke of everlasting love, deep earnestness, the courage of faith,
firmness of character, Norwegianness : —

" And stormy cheer and song go round
For the small Folk, rock-will'd, rock-bound."

He looked about him, he searched, he probed, and found nothing
in the world of reality that answered to these words. Then there
grew out of this very longing for the ideal a peculiar power in
him of seeing hoUowness everywhere. It became an instinct with
him to test whatever seemed genuine, and without much astonish-
ment convince himself of its falseness. It became a passion with
him to tap with his finger on everything that looked like metal,
and a kind of painful satisfaction to him to hear the hollow ring
which at the same time wounded his ear and confirmed his sus-
picion. Wherever he encountered so-called greatness, it became
a habit and a necessity for him to ask, as in the Rhymed Letter
to a Swedish Lady: "Is the great then really great?" He
had a keen eye for the egoism arid untruth which may underlie
the imaginative life, for the bungling which the phrases of political
freedom and progress may cover ; and as time went on a süperb

46 HENRIK IBSEN

ideal (or moral) suspiciousness became his muse. It inspired him
to ever bolder investigations. Nothing awed or frightened him,
neither what looked like idyllic happiness in family life, nor what
passed for dogmatic certainty in social life. And the bolder the
investigations became, the greater dauntlessness did he acquire
in communicating, announcing, proclaiming the result. It became
his Chief intellectual delight to disturb, to provoke, all whose
interest it was to cloak abuses in extenuating euphemisms.

Just as it had always seemed to him that there was far too
much talk about ideals which were never to be met with in life,
so did he feel with ever more indignant certainty that, as if by
common consent, men were silent as to the deepest, most incur-
able failures of their ideals, as to the real, actual horrors of life.
In good Society they were passed over as improbable or unmen-
tionable, in poetry, as unpleasant; for aesthetic theory had banished
from polite literature whatever was too trenchant, whatever
was unmistakably and immitigably painful. Thus did it happen
that Ibsen became the poet of the grim side of life, and hence his
inclination to vindicate his own position against the multitude, in
bitter and cutting phrases.

Henrik Ibsen's personal appearance is suggestive of the
qualities he has revealed in his poetry. The severe or sarcastic
expression of his face conceals a delicate spirituality that only occa-
sionally breaks through. Ibsen is short and thick-set ; he dresses
with a certain style and elegance, and looks very distinguished.
His walk is slow, his carriage dignified and stately. His head is
large and striking, with its thick mane of greyish hair, which he
wears rather long. The forehead, which dominates the face, is
remarkable; abrupt, high, broad, and yet perfectly formed, it
bears the stamp of greatness and spiritual wealth. The mouth,
when in repose, is compressed, as if lipless ; closed and resolute,
it reveals the fact that Ibsen is a man of few words. And he
does ofteo sit silent in general Company, like the taciturn, some-
times alinost gruff doorkeeper of his mind's sanctuary. He can
talk tite-ä-titCf or in quite a small circle, but even then he is any-
thing but communicative. I once in Rome showed Runeberg^s
bust of him to a Frenchman, who remarked : " The expression
is more spiritual than poetic." One can see in Ibsen's face that
he is a satirist and thinker, not an enthusiastc3 Yet his best short
poems, Gone^ and a few others, show that at one time or other

SECOND IMPRESSION (1882) 47

during the battle of life, a lyric Pegasus must Jiave been killed
under him.

I know two expressions in bis face. The first is that in which
a smile, Ibsen's kind, beautifui smile^ breaks through and animates
the mask of bis countenance, all the geniality and cordiality that
lie deepest down in bis heart Coming out to meet one. Ibsen is
slightly embarrassed in mannen, as melancholy, serious natures
are apt to be. But he has this charming smile,- and smile, glance,
and hand-clasp say much that he neither would nor could clothe
in words. Sometimes, too, in the course of a conversation, with
a sly laugh {schmunzelnd^ as the Germans say), and an expression
of good-natured roguishness, he will let fall some short, sharp,
anything but amiable expression of dissent, which nevertheless
reveals all that is most amiable in bis character. The smile
atones for the sharpness. ^
vj^ \ ^ut I also know another expression in bis face, that which is
calied forth by impatience, wrath, righteous indignation, biting
scorn : an expression of almost cruel severity, which recalls the
lines in bis beautifui old poem of Terje Vigen : —

" But when, on days of storm, bis eye
Gleamed like the stormy day,
The boldest came not willingly
In Terje Vigen's way."

It is with this expression that, as a poet, he has most fre-
quently shown himself to the world.

Ibsen is a born polemist, and his first poetic utterance
{Catüina) was his first declaration of war. From the time he
came to years of discretion, which in his case was not early, he
has never really doubted that if he, the individual, were weigbed
in the scales with what goes by the name of society (to Ibsen the
collective embodiment of those who are afraid of the truth, and
who attempt to plaster over sores with phrases) he would certainly
not be found wanting. He maintains, among other whimsical
paradoxes, that only a certain amount of intelligence is available
for distribution at any given time, and that if one or two indi-
viduals, as, for instance, Goethe and Schiller in the Germany of
their day, are very liberally endowed, their contemporaries will
be proportionately stupid. He inclines, I should imagine, to the

■

48 HENRIK IBSEN

opinion that he received his gifts at a time when there were very
few to share in the sum total.

Hence Ibsen does not feel himself to be the son of a father-
land, part of a whole, the leader of a group, a member of a Com-
munity; he simply feels himself to be a gifted individual, and
the one thing he really believes in and respects is personality. j^
In this detachment from all natural solidarity, in this vindication
of the Spiritual ego, there is something that vividly recalls the
period of Scandinavian history in which he was brought up.
Kierkegaard's influence is the most noticeable. But Ibsen's
Isolation is of a totally different stamp. Björnson's diametri-
cally opposite disposition has probably contribute^l not a little
to its development It always influences a character to be
set by fate in direct contrast with a markedly dissimilar con-
temporary. Not unfrequently it is a misfortune to a great man
to see his name constantly coupled with another's, always in com-
parison, whether for praise or blame. The compulsory, inevit-
able twinship is apt to irritate and injure him. In this case it
may have led Ibsen to exaggerate the marked characteristics of
his temperament, namely, its intensity and reserve.

No one who, like Ibsen, believes in the rights and power of
the emancipated individual, no one who has feit himself, as early
as he did, at war with the world around him, has a favourable
opinion of the multitude. It is evident that contempt for mankind
developed itself in Ibsen in his early manhood. Not that he
began by cherishing an exaggerated opinion of his own talent
or his own worth. His is the seeking, doubting, questioning
nature;

" To ask is my vocation, not to answer,"

and such minds have no bias towards vanity. One sees, too,
how long he is in finding his own language and form//^hink of
the crude manner in which he begins with Catilina ; ot the strong
influence of Oehlenschläger on his little unpublished drama, The
Hero^s Grave ; of the way in which The Feast at Solhaug recalls,
even in the very metre, a writer so unlike the author as Henrik
Hertz (especially in the latter's drama, Svend Dyring's House) ;
remember the free use he makes in The Vikings at Helgeland of
effective traits from Icelandic Sagas, before he ventures to trust
tp his own inventive power and his own markedly characteristic

SECOND IMPRESSION (1882) 49

style.^ It is much nearer the truth to say that Ibsen was one of

those natures who set out in life with much humility, ready to

recognise superiority in others, until the day of trial brings with

it a consciousness of their own power. From that moment, how-

ever, such natures are, as a rule, far more stiff-necked than those

who were originally self-satisfied. They weigh, as on an invisible

balance, those whose superiority they formerly acknowledged,

apd, finding them too light, they throw them on one side.

^x-^n Ibsen*s eyes the average man is small, egoistical, and

pitifuL He looks upon him, not from the purely scientific, but

\ from the moral point of view ; and in his character of moralist, he

I j dwells far more on the badness of man than on his blindness and

1 foolishness. In Fla ubert's ^es, man is bad because he is stupid ;

I in Ibsen's, he is stupid because he is bad. Think, for instance, of

Thorvald Helmer. He all along judges his wife stupidly, stupidly

as an ass. When Nora is saying a last farewell to Dr. Rank,

when the man prepared to meet death is face to face with the

woman resolved to seek it, and is answering her with comp^-

sionate tenderness. Helmer Stands by with outstretched arms, the

personification of intoxicated sensual desire. But his stupidity

arises solely from his self-righteous egoism.

Ibsen considers mankind to be pitiably bad, not actively

, wicked. I was long ago Struck by an aphorism in Kierke-

gaard's Either — ör, which seems very appropriate as a motto

1 for Ibsen : '* Let others complain of this age as being wicked,

/ I complain of it as being contemptible, for it is devoid of passion.

i Men's thoughts are thin and frail as lace, they themselves are the

; weakling lace-makers. The thoughts of their hearts are too

paltry to be sinfuL". What but this does Brand say, when he

complains of the God of his generation, and contrasts him with

his own God, his own ideal ?

" Ye need, such feebleness to brook,
A God who'll through his fingers look,
Who, like yourselves, is hoary grown,
And keeps a cap for his bald crown.
Mine is another kind of God !

^ Later remark. In the preface to the second edition of The Feast at Solhaug^
published in 1883, twenty-seven years after the first, Ibsen has protested against the
theory of his having been influenced by Henrik Hertz. — G. B.

^tr

50 HENRIK IBSEN

Mine is a storm where thine's a lull,
Implacable where thine's a clod,
All-loving there, where thine is duU ;
And he is young like Hercules,
No hoary sipper of life's lees ! ^^

What does the Button- Moulder say but this ? He answers
Peer Gynt in much the same way as Mephistopheles in Heiberg's
A Soul öfter Death answered " the Soul." Peer Gynt's destina-
tion is not the lake of fire and brimstone ; far from it ; he is only
to go into the casting-ladle and be melted down again ; he was
no sinner, for '* it needs both strength and earnestness to sin " ;
he was simply second-rate :

" So into the waste-box you needs must go,
And then, as they phrase it, be merged in the mass."

Peer Gynt, in Ibsen's mind, is the typical expression of the
national vices of the Norwegian people. They inspire him, as we
see, less with horror than with contempt.

This view of the matter explains even those of Ibsen's youth-
ful works in which the author's originality is still undeveloped.
Though such a character, for instance, as Margit in The Feast at
Solhaugf inevitably recalled Hertz's Ragnhild to Danish readers,
yet it is a character of quite different stuff from Hertz's — ^harder,
fiercer, and more resolute. A woman of the present day who
loved madly and hopelessly would feel herseif more akin to
Ragnhild than to Margit; Margit is an intimation to such a
woman that she, the reader, is the child of a degenerate age,
devoid of the courage and consistency of passion, miserable in her
half-heartedness. And why does Ibsen in The Vikings go back"
to the wild tragedy and magnificent horror of the Völsung myth ?
In Order to offer such a picture to the present age, to awe, to
shame this generation by showing it the greatness of its fore-
fathers — the passion that swiftly and ruthlessly presses towards
its aim, the proud strength that disdains words, that acts silently,
suffers silently, dies silently ; wills of iron, hearts of gold ; deeds
which a thousand years have not sunk in oblivion. Look at
yourselves in the mirror !

Take the first expression of this militant fervour, Catilina^
a drama conceived with all an undergraduate's enthusiastic

SECOND IMPRESSION (1882) 51

sympathy. Catiline despises and hates Roman society, where
violence and self-seeking reign, where a man becomes ruier by
intrigue and cunning; and he, the individual, rises in rebellipn
against society. Take the same militant tEfwour in one of Ibsen's
latest works, that admirable drama, A DolFs Hause — there it
comes subdued, but no less cutting, from a woman's Ups. When
Nora, the little lark, the squirrel, the child, finally braces herseif
up and says, " I must find out who is right, society or I," — when
this frail creature dares to place herseif on the one side and the
whole of society on the other, we feel that she is Ibsen's daughter.
Then take the same habit of mind in its last expression, so alarm-
ing to many, When Mrs. Alving says, speaking of the conven-
tional dogmas of society : '' I wanted only to pick at a Single knot;
but when I ,had got that undone, the whole thing ravelled out.
And then I understood that it was all machine-sewn " — one hears
through the words, in spite of all the distance separating the poet
from the created character, his sigh of relief at having once, even
if indirectly, made a clean breast of it.

Catiline and Mrs. Alving, Ibsen's earliest and latest characters,
convey the same sense of Isolation as the intervening creations,
Falk, Brand, and Nora ; there is in all the same desperate running
of the head against a stone wall.

► The accepted name in modern Europe for such a view of the
World and mankind is pessimism. But pessimism is of many
kinds and shades. It may, as in the case of Schopenhauer and
Von Hartmann, consist in the conviction that life itself is an evil,
and that the sum-total of happiness in a human life is infinitesimal
l in comparison with its sum of pain and suifering; it may de-
\ monstrate the worthlessness of all we value most — prove the
sadness of youth, the joylessness of labour, the emptiness of
pleasure, and our utter indifference to it when it becomes a thing
of custom. The holders of these views will either, like Schopen-
hauer, prescribe asceticism, or, like Von Hartmann, recommend
labour in the cause of progress, even while realising that every
advance in civilisation brings with it an increase of human misery.
This is not Ibsen's pessimism. He too finds the world bad, but
he does not concem himself with the question whether life is or is
not a blessing. He looks on things entirely from the moral point
of view.

The pessimistic philosopher dwells on the illusory nature of

HENRIK IBSEN

lovCy shows how little happiness it brings, and how that happi-
ness is practically Illusion, the aim and object of love not
being the felicity of the individual, but the greatest possible
perfection of the Coming generation. To Ibsen, love's comedy
does not consist in the inevitable erotic Illusion — in that alone he
sees no comedy; that has his füll sympathy — but, in the de-
generation of character attendant on the prosaic Philistinism of the
usual legal union, originally contracted with erotic motives. The
metamorphosis of the missionary enthusiast, on his engagement,
into a teacher in a girls' school — that is a subject for his satire,
that is love's comedy for him. Only once, as it were in a flash,
has he risen high above his usual moral Standpoint in regard to
erotic conditions, and that is in ComplicationSf not only the
wittiest, t)ut also the most profound of all Ibsen's short poems ;
though even here he still writes as a satirist.

The pessimistic philosopher dwells with predilection on the
thought of the unattainableness of happiness, alike for the individual
and for the race. He lays stress on the thought that pleasure slips
away between our fingers, that all we desire comes to us too late,
and that what we do attain is far from having that eifect on our
minds, which the desire for it had conjured up before us. He sees
in an utterance like Goethe's famous remark that in seventy-five
years he had not had four weeks' actual pleasure, but had been
continually trying to turn over a stone which always feil back
into its place again, a decisive proof of the impossibility of happi-
ness. For how can that which Goethe, the favourite of gods and
men, did not attain, be attained by common every-day mortals !
Not so Ibsen. Sceptical as he is, he does not actually doubt
the possibility of happiness. Even Mrs. Alving, who has been
so sorely wronged by circumstances, believes that under other
conditions she might have been happy, believes that her wretched
husband himself might have been happy. And Ibsen is evidently
of her opinion. What she says about the " half-grown town "
that has " no joys to offer, only dissipations, no object in life, only
an ofHcial position, no real work, only business," comes from
Ibsen's heart. Life itself is not an evil. Existence itself is not
joyless. No, some one is to blame, or rather many are to blame,
when a life is lost to the joy of life; and Norwegian society,
depressing, coarse in its pleasures, enslaved to conventional ideas
of duty, is pointed out as the culprit.

SECOND IMPRESSION (1882)

To the pessimistic philosopher, optimism is a kind of material-
ism. He fears that optimism, preached as he hears it in every
Street, threatens a world-catastrophe. According to him, what is
wanted is to teach the masses that they have nothing to hope
from the future ; the pessimistic creed of universal suffering is the
only one that can make the futility of their efforts clear to them.
This view is never found in Ibsen. When he touches a social
sore, as in The Pillars of Society^ and elsewhere, it is always one
of a moral nature. Some one is to blame for it. Whole strata of
Society are rotten, whole rows of society's pillars are decayed and
hoUow. vThe close air of the small Community is unhealthy ; in
Wide spheres there is room for great actions. A breath from with-
out, that is to say, a breath of the spirit of truth and liberty, has
power to purify the atmosphere.

Hence Ibsen, looking on the world as bad, feels no compassion
for men, only Indignation. His pessimism is not of a meta-
physical, but of a moral nature, and is based on a conviction of
the possibility of realising ideals ; it is, in a word, the pessimism
of indignation. And his want of sympathy with many kinds of
suffering results from his conviction of the educative power of
suffering. Only through suffering can these small, miserable men
become great. Only through struggle, defeat, and chastisement,
can these small, miserable communities become healthy. Ibsen,
who himself has feit the bracing power of adversity, who has
drained the wholesome draught of- bitter experience, believes
in the Utility of pain, of adversity, and of oppression. This is
aps most evident in his Emperor and Galilean.

Ibsen's acquaintance with historical documents concerning
Julian and with Julian's own writings, is evidently considerable.
And yet there is little of the historical in his general conception
of the character. He has robbed the man of his real greatness.
He has seen him, not indeed as he appears to the orthodox
churchman, but still with Christian eyes. He lays stress on a
persecution of the Christians with which the real Julian would
have nothing whatever to do. His conception of Julian is, that
by this persecution of his Christian subjects, he became the real
creator of the Christianity of his age, that is to say, its awakener
from the dead. To Ibsen, Julian's significance in world-his-
tory is this : By transforming Christianity from a court and
State religion into a persecuted and oppressed faith, he restored

T
f

54 HENRIK IBSEN

to it its pristine spiritual impress, and its primitive passion for
martyrdom. Defied by the Christians, the emperor punishes with
severity, but bis punishments have an effect never dreamt of by
bim. His old fcUow-students, Gregory, who bad not tbe courage
for any decisive action, but bad "bis little circle, bis family to
guard," and bad ncitber power nor ability for more, and Basilios,
wbo devoted bimself to "poring over tbe writings of worldly
sages on bis country estate," even tbese now arise, strengtbened
by persecution, like lions in bis patb.

SECOND IMPRESSION (1882) 59

themselves publicly, but were not yet perceived by others, had
been occupying and as it were tormenting him. Immediately
after the conclusion of the great Franco-German war, at a time
when all minds were taken up with it, and when the possibility
of anything like the Commune in Paris had scarcely suggested
itself to a Single Scandinavian mind, Ibsen put before me, as
political ideals, conditions and principles the exact nature of which
I do not clearly recoUect, but which were undoubtedly closely
akin to those publicly proclaimed by the Paris Commune, in a
much distorted form, exactly a month later. Referring to the
difference in our views on liberty and politics, Ibsen wrote to me
(February 17, 1871): —

" The struggle for liberty is nothing but the constant active appro-
priation of the idea of liberty. He who possesses liberty otherwise
than as an aspiration possesses it souUess, dead. One of the qualities
of liberty is that, as long as it is being striven after, it goes on expand-
ing. Therefore, the man who Stands still in the midst of the struggle
and says, * I have it,' merely shows by so doing that he has just lost
it. Now this very contentedness in the possession of a dead liberty
is characteristic of the so-called State, and, as I have said, it is not
a good characteristic. No doubt the franchise, self-taxation, &c.,
are benefits — but to whom? To the Citizen, not to the individual.
Now, reason does not imperatively demand that the individual should
be a Citizen. Far from it. The State is the curse of the individual.
With what is Prussia's political strength bought ? With the absorption
of the individual in the political and geographica! idea. The waiter is
the best soldier. And on the other band, take the Jewish people, the
aristocracy of the human race — how is it they have kept their place
apart, their poetical halo, amid surroundings of coarse craelty? By
having no State to bürden them. Had they remained in Palestine,
they would long ago have lost their individuality in the process of their
State's construction, like all other nations. Away with the State ! I
will take part in that revolution. Undermine the whole conception of
a State, declare free choice and spiritual kinship to be the only all-
important conditions of any union, and you will have the commencement
of a liberty that is worth something. Changes in forms of government
are pettifogging affairs — a degree less or a degree more, mere foolish-
ness. The State has its root in time, and will ripe and rot in time.
Greater things than it will fall — religion, for example. Neither moral
conceptions nor art-forms have an etemity before them. How much
are we really in duty bound to pin our faith to ? Who will guarantee
me that on Jupiter two and two do not make five ? . . ."

6o HENRIK IBSEN

Henrik Ibsen certainly cannot have been acquainted with the
anonymous " Barrister's ** no less ingenious than paradoxical at-
tempt to show in what way two and two may be imagined to make
five on Jupiter; nor is it probable that he had any idea how loudly
Stuart Mill and other adherents of radical empiricism would have
applauded the last-quoted line ; it is the natural bent of his mind
that has led him to this all-embracing scepticism, which in him
is so remarkably combined with vigorous faith. Did not his
Brand say : —

" It is not for a Church I cry,
It is not dogmas I defend ;
Day dawn'd on both, and, possibly,
Night may on both of them descend.
What's made has * finis ' for its brand ;
Of moth and worm it feels the flaw ;
And then, by nature and by law,
Is for an embryo thrust aside."

The letter above quoted forms a vigorous commentary on
ihese words, and affords, moreover, a proof of Ibsen's inspired
apprehension of what is going on under the surface of the age.
The foUowing extract may be given without danger of lowering
him in public estimation, since even Prince Bismarck has publicly
acknowledged that there lurked a " grain of sound sense " at thcf .
heart of the Commune's ill-fated endeavours. On i8th May
1871, Ibsen wrote: —

" . . . Is it not villainous of the Commune in Paris to have gone
and spoilt my excellent state-theory, or rather non-state-theory ? The
idea is ruined for many a day ; I cannot in decency even proclaim it
in verse. Yet it has a sound kerne!, that I see clearly ; and some day
it will be put into practice without any caricature. . . ."

/^ It is his persistent exaltation of the individual that places Ibsen
, J in an attitude of antagonism towards the accepted theories of the
\ State and of society. I am not sure that I quite understand him on
this point ; his train of thought is allen to me. I understand how
men like Lorenz von Stein and Gneist see in modern history one
constant feud between the State and society, and how they, with
a new and invigorating conception of the State idea, turn against
society ; I can also understand how a new conception of society

SECOND IMPRESSION (1882) 61

may lead to abhorrence of the State ; but I cannot quite under-
stand the ambiguity of Ibsen's attitude, and do not even know
whether Ibsen himsclf is conscious of any ambiguity in it.

He carries even further bis anxiety lest the sting of personality
should be blunted and its best part sacrificed. He believes that, in
Order to develop all the fruitful possibilities of his nature, the
individual must first and foremost stand free, stand alone; and
he therefore has a watchful eye for the dangers in this respect
that every association, even friendship, even marriage, brings
with it I remember his answer to a letter written by me in one
of those desponding moods to which young people give such free
expression, in which I had told him with a little sigh that I had
few or no friends. Ibsen wrote (6th March 1870) : —

"... You say that you have no friends at home. That is what I
have fancied for a long time. When a man Stands, as you do, in a
close personal relation to his life-work, he cannot really expect to keep
his friends. . . . Friends are a costly luxury, and when one invests
one's capital in a vocation or a mission in life, one cannot afford to
have friends. The expensiveness of friendship does not lie in what
one does for one's friends, but in what one, out of regard for them, .
leaves undone. This means the crushing of many an intellectual germ. ^
It is an experience that I have gone through, and consequently I have
to look back on a number of years during which it was not possible for
me to be myself. . . ."

Is not all Ibsen's independence of character and loneliness of
spirit feit in these ironic words, ''the expensiveness of friend-
ship " ? And does not the whole passage give some explanation of
the comparatively late development of his originality ? As I have
already asserted, it is evident that Ibsen began his career with
no excessive amount of self-confidence.

And as with friendship, so with marriage ; it too, under certain
circumstances, may be a hindrance to the independence of the
individual. Therefore it is that Nora refuses to consider her
duty towards her husband and her children the most sacred of
all ; there is a duty more sacred still — her duty towards herseif.
Therefore it is that she answers Helmer's " Before all eise, you "^
are wife and a mother," with, " I believe that before all eise I am
a human being — or at least that I should try to become one."

Ibsen shares with Kierkegaard the conviction that in every

62 HENRIK IBSEN

human being there slumbers a mighty souI, an unconquerable
power ; but he differs from Kierkegaard in holding this essence
of individuality to be human, while Kierkegaard looks upon it
as something supernatural. According to Ibsen, a man is to
develop his individuality, not for the sake of higher powers, but
for his own sake. And as the first condition of this development
is that he shall stand free, and be his whole seif, concessions to the
World are to him the principle of evil, the great enemy. Here we
arrive at the fundamental idea of Brand. Remember how Brand
says :

" But from these scraps and from these shreds,
These headless hands and handless heads,
These torso-stumps of soul and thought,
'""" A man complete and whole shall grow,

And God His glorious child shall know,
His heir, the Adam that He wrought 1 "

Hence the necessity for such an apparently inhuman motto as
" All or nothing." Hence it is that the "spirit of compromise,"
even in the hour of death, appears to Brand only as the temptress
who would have his little finger in order that she may possess
herseif of his whole hand. And we haye the same spirit of com-
promise reappearing in Peer Gynt in the form of the Boyg, the
embodiment of all that is cowardly and yielding in man, all that
turns aside and goes round about : —

" Strike back at me, can't you ! "

" The Boyg isn't mad."
" Strike ! "

" The Boyg strikes not."

"Fight! You shall!"
" The great Boyg conquers but does not fight."

" The great Boyg conquers in all things by yielding."

To wrest humanity from the suffocating embrace of the Boyg,
to take captive the spirit of compromise, bind it hand and foot
and cast it into the depths of the sea, this has been the aim of
Ibsen, the poet. And this wresting of the individual from the
power of compromise and of the Boyg is the revolution as he
conceives it.

SECOND IMPRESSION (1882) 63

I once asked Henrik Ibsen: ''Is there one among all the
Danish poets whom you, at your present stage of development
(1871) care at all about ? " After letting me guess for some time
in vain, he answered : " Once upon a time, somewhere in Zealand,
there walked behind his plough an old man in a smock-frock, who
had looked upon men and things tili he was wroth at heart ; that
is a man I like/' Is it not significant that Bredahl should be the
Danish poet who is really most sympathetic to Ibsen ? Bredahl,
too, was a man whose indignation darkened his outlook on the
World, not indeed a very profound psychologist, but a poet in
whose loud onslaught on " Stormskjoldbulder " ^ we have, as it
were, the thunder preceding Ibsen's lightning. Bredahl sees
only the tyranny and hypocrisy that are external and gross, Ibsen

Isearches out the t3rranny and hypocrisy that lie hidden in the
depths of the heart. Bredahl is still only like the " Revolutionary
Orator" of Ibsen's poem: he "provides the deluge," while his
great successor, going more thoroughly to work, " has pleasure
in placing a torpedo under the ark."

I have called Ibsen a revolutionary nature. I need hardly pro-
test against being misunderstood to mean by this that his is a
nature which enthusiastically welcomes outward, violent changes.
Far from it ; the very reverse is the case. Solitary as he is and
feels himself to be, unfavourably disposed towards all parties,
simply as parties, refined, polished, reserved, "awaiting the
approach of the time in a spotless wedding-garment," he is, in a
purely external sense, rather to' be classed as a conservative — a
Strange kind of conservative indeed — conservative out of radicalism,
because he expects nothing from piecemeal reforms. At heart he

Iis a determined revolutionist, but the revolution for which he longs
and works is the purely spiritual one of which I have already
spoken. The reader will not have forgotten the concluding words
of that letter of December 1870, quoted above: "What is really
wanted is a revolution of the spirit of man." They are words I
can never forget ; for they in a manner represent Ibsen's whole
poetical " programme " — an admirable " programme " for a poet
to put forth.

1 Christian Hviid Bredahl (1784-1860) is called by Dr. Brandes {Mennesker
jog Verkevy p. 32), "the coarse and wild dramatist of indignation - pessimism."
"Stormskjoldbulder" (literally " Storm - shield - rumble ") is one of the leading
<:haracters in his Dramatic Scenes Extracted from an Antique Manuscript^ a series
of fantastico-satirical dramas or dialogues.

64 HENRIK IBSEN

I should, however, be false to my own convictions if I were to
say that Ibsen's philosophy of life seems to me to contain more
than a strong element of truth. It is a philosophy of life in virtue
of which a man may think and may write poetry, but he cannot
act ; nay, in the present State of society, he is hardly even justified
in speaking out plainly, because he thereby in a manner calls on
others to act, which in this case is equivalent to rushing on their
min. He who, from the height of his aspiration after great,
decisive, sweeping revolutions, looks down indifferently or con-
I temptuously on the slow, petty changes of ordinary progress, on
the politician's gradual, dilatory, small improvements, on the com-
promises to which the practica! reformer must consent in order to
attain even the partial realisation of his idea, and on those associa-
tions without the help of which it is impossible for any but an
autocrat to carry a single scheme into practical execution — ^the
man, I say, who looks with contempt on all these things, must
give up all thought of moving a finger in practical matters, Like
Sören Kierkegaard and like Brand, he can do nothing but point
to the yawning chasm that separates existing from ideal condi-
tions. If such a man were to take, or induce others to take, active
measures to realise his aspirations, he would simply lead his
followers headlong over the brink of the dizzy abyss that separates
the actual from the desired State of things, and — run the risk of
being promptly arrested. Even the poet can only express such
extremely ideal views indirectly, suggestively, ambiguously,
through the mouths of iiii)Sependent dramatic characters who re-
lieve the author of all responsibility. Only vulgär adversaries
could take the grim jest about the torpedo under the ark to be
literal, bloodthirsty earnest.

Such a philosophy entails a Separation of the theoretical from
the practical, of the individual from the Citizen, of intellectual
liberty from that practical liberty which means responsibility — a
dualism which can be carried into practice only by a dramatic poet
living in exile, who need have nothing whatever to do with State,
society, politics, parties, or reforms.

Nor does the ideal of spiritual nobility inherent in this philo-
sophy seem to me a very high one. It is quite true that a great
author best maintains his personal dignity by never being seen in
the thick of the fray ; it is true that it gives an Impression of dis-
tinction to hold back, never to interfere in the disputes of the

SECOND IMPRESSION (1882) 65

day, never to write a newspaper article. But it seems to me
that there is more distinction still in the action of the legitimist
generals who enlisted as common soldiers in Cond6's army, and
fought on foot in the foremost ranks. By so doing they lost not
a whit of their inner, essential dignity.

III

We have now arrived at a stage in our examination of the
Spiritual life of the individual at which we can view it in the
light of the literary self-consciousness and aspirations of his age.
I expressly say of his age and not of his country, for Ibsen's spirit
is as pronouncedly European as Björnson*s, in spite of his cosmo-
politan culture, is national. The poet's attitude towards the self-
consciousness of his age means his relation to its ideas and
forms. Every age has its own ideas, which in art disclose them-
selves in the subject chosen, the ideal striven after.

Ideas are not begotten by the poet. They reveal themselves
to the thinker, the Student, at his work ; they come in the shape
of inspired apprehension of some natural law or relation, develop
themselves and acquire form in the process of scientific experi-
ment, of historic or philosophic research — grow, and are purified
and strengthened in the struggle for existence, until, like the angels
of the Bible, they become thrones and principalities and powers,
spread their pinions and rule the age.

The poet does'not beget ideas ; that is not his calling, not his
afTair. But the true poet is impressed by them while they are yet
growing and struggling, and in the idea-battle of his age he takes
his place on the side of the ideas. He is carried away by them
and cannot help himself; he understands without necessarily
having learned. The bad poet, he who possesses nothing of the
poet but a mechanical aptitude, inherited or acquired, has no ear
for the low rumble that teils of ideas undermining the ground ; no
ear for the throb of their pinions in the air. Heine, in the preface
to his New PoemSj says that while he was writing them, he
seemed to hear the whirring of the wings of a bird above his
head. ** When I told my friends, the young Berlin poets, about
it," he continues, '*they looked at one another with a curious
expression, and assured me unanimously that such a thing had
never happened to them." The whirr which the Berlin poets had
never heard, was the wipg-winnowing of new ideas.

SECOND IMPRESSION (1882) 67

No poet, however, can write entirely without ideas. The bad
poets too have theirs; thcy have those of the past; they give
weaky dull expression to the ideas which the artists of an earlier
period rendered with true poetic fervour. The ideas of their age
as a rule seem to them utterly " unpoetical." They hold it im-
possible to make poetry out of them.

But he who in his youth (in The Pretenders) wrote the me-
morable words, " For you 'tis impossible, for you can but work
out the old saga afresh ; but for me 'tis as easy as for the falcon
to cleave the clouds," has ncver allowed himself to be long dis-
mayed by the thoughts of his age. To many a new thought he
has given flesh and blood, and by embodying it has propagated
it ; many another he has deepened by pouring into it the wealth
of his feeling. We gain some idea of the urgent necessity he has
feit for Standing in a living relation to nascent ideas from the
beautiful lines in which the Balls of Wool reproach Peer Cynt : —

" We are thoughts,
Thou shouldst have thought us.

• • • • •

We should have soared up
Like clangorous voices,
And here we must trundle
As grey-yarn thread-balls.

We are a watchword,

Thou shouldst have proclaimed us.

. . . • •

We are deeds,

Thou shouldst have achieved us I

Doubt, the throttler,

Has crippled and riven us."

These are accusing words with which one can fancy the poet
spurring himself on in moments of languor, but which it is impos-
sible to imagine as addressed to himself by Peer Gynt. Can one
conceive the miserable Peer setting himself a watchword ? Can
one reproach him with not having done so ?

Let US now see what subjccts and ideals specially engross the
mind of this age. They seem to me to fall naturally into the
foUowing groups : —

I. Those connected with relrgion (that is, men's reverence

68 HENRIK IBSEN

for ideas which they conceive as powers), and with the struggle
between those who bielieve these powers to be natural and those
who believe them to be supernatural ;

2. Those treating of the contrast between the past and the
future, between age and youth, between things old and new, and
specially of the contrast and struggle between two successive
generations ;

3. Those that treat of the various classes of society and
their life-struggle, of differences of Station, and specially of the
contrast between rieh and poor, social influence and social im-
potence ;

4. Those treating of the contrast between the two sexes,
of the mutual erotic and social relations of men and women,
and specially of woman's economic, moral, and intellectual eman-
cipation.

We see religious subjects and problems treated in a great
variety of ways in our day, although always in the modern spirit.
Let US look at the chief of these varieties. In the greatest poet
of the older generation in France, Victor Hugo, a weak species of
pantheistic deism asserts itself, in spite of his enthusiastic ration-
alism ; we still trace in him the influence of the preceding Century ;
religion is glorified at the expense of religions ; love, which unites,
at the expense of dogma, which separates and scatters. By the
leading authors of the younger generation, Flaubert, for example,
religion is depicted with scientific frigidity, but always from its
shady side ; to him and his kindred spirits it is a hallucination,
which has somehow gained credence. The greatest English poet
of our day, Swinburne, is an impassioned poetic heathen, who
regards Christianity, to him the denial of nature, as his natural
enemy. Italy's greatest modern poet, Leopardi, found rest in a
lofty and profound pessimism, leading up to stoic renunciation.
/ Carducci, her foremost living poet, is just as modern and more
combative. Germany*s chief writers, Gottfried Keller, Paul Heyse,
Fr. Spielhagen, and others, have championed a godless but soulful
religion of humanity.

In Scandinavia the Situation was a peculiar one. The Danish
writers of the preceding period had as a rule done homage to
orthodoxy. The only philosophic spirit ämong them, J. L.
Heiberg, who at first expressed rationalistic opinions, ended by,
apparently at any rate, making concessions to dogma; and the

SECOND IMPRESSION (1882)

one serious attempt made in Denmark to undermine the authority
of the Church, Kierkegaard's violent attack on the Establishment,
was not directed against the truth of its doctrines, but exclusively
against the lives of its members, and especially of its clergy, as
not being in accordance with these doctrines. This position of
Kierkegaard's has, until quite lately, determined that of most
Danish-Norwegian literary men. Modern fiction in Denmark
and Norway has seldom or never touched upon the objective side
of the matter, the essence of religion ; it has confined itself almost
exclusively to the subjective side, which explains the extraordinary
wealth of clerical characters in this literature, both before and
after the author's emancipation from orthodoxy. The pastors in
Björnson*s and Fru Thoresen's peasant-stories indicate the stand-
point before^ those in Björnson's, Schandorph's, Kielland*s, and
Ibsen*s later works, the Standpoint after emancipation.
% Ibsen follows in Kierkegaard's footsteps. Brought up like
the rest of his generation in the north, under the influence of
romanticism, his attitude towards religion is at first uncertain,
confused. In his own nature there was a double bias, certain to
give rise to inward conflict — an inborn tendency to mysticism,
and an equally strong natural tendency towards hard, dry ration-
ality. In few other men does one find such almost morbid flights
of fancy alternating with such quiet acceptance of the prose of
life. Brand and The Pillars of Society are as different in one
important point as if they had been written by different authors.
One is pure and simple mysticism, the other pure and simple
prose : the idea of the one is strained to the uttermost, the other
conveys a good homely moral. "^

No one with any understanding of Norwegian intellectual life
can doubt that the great effect produced by Brandy the work
which laid the föundation of Ibsen's fame as a poet, was due to
its being interpreted as a kind of poetic sermon, a Jerfemiad, a
work of edification. It was not the real merit of the poem that
impressed the general public, and was the cause of the numerous
editions ; no, people flocked to the booksellers to buy Brand as
they flock to a church after the appointment of a new and
more energetic pastor. In a correspondence I had with Ibsen
on the subject of this work, he himself expressly asserted
that Brandts priestly calling was a purely exlernal, accidental
detail.

70 HENRIK IBSEN

In a letter of thc 26th June 1869, he writes : —

"... Brand has been misinterpreted, at any rate as regards my
Intention. . . . The misinterpretation evidently has its root in the
accident that Brand is a clergyman, and that the problem is expressed
in religious terms. A sculptor or a poHtician would have suited my
syllogism quite as well as a priest. It would have given the same
relief to the feeling that impelied me to write, if, instead of Brand,. I
had taken, say Galileo, with one modification : he would, of course, have
had to remain firm, and not admit that the earth stood still. Nay, who
knows but that my choice, if I had been born a hundred years later,
might have fallen on yourself, and your attack on Rasmus Nielsen's
philosophy of compromise ? Upon the whole, there is more objectivity
in Brand than people have as yet discovered, and on this, as a poet, I ■
pride myself. . . ."

Although I have carefuUy kept everything personal out of my
quotations, I allow myself to publish this jesting reference to the
literary controversies of the day, because it shows how little
importance Ibsen attached to the clerical dement in Brand, A
further proof of this is afforded by the following-passage from a
letter I recei ved from him at the time when the introduction to
my book, Main Currents in the Literattire of the Nineteenth Cen-
tury y was weighing heavily on my mind : —

** It seems to me that you are now passing through much the same
crisis that I passed through when I was about to write Brandy and I
am sure that you too will be able to find the medicine that will drive
the disease out of your body. Vigorous prod uction is a capital
specific. ..."

It is piain enough that the poet himself lays stress in Brandy
not on doctrine, but o.n power of self-sacrifice and strength of
character. Yet, although Ibsen is undoubtedly the best, the only
authoritative judge of the Intention of bis own work, he never-
theless, in my opinion, undervalues the strength of the unconscious
influence which led him to choose this subject and no other.
This unconscious influence was, it seems to me, the national
romantic inclination towards mysticism. Even reading Brand
according to Ibsen's own Interpretation, the parallelism with^
Norwegian religious phenomena is no less obvious. To Danes
it could not but seem as if Ibsen had had Kierkegaard in mind,

SECOND IMPRESSION (1882) 71

for he too laid the greatest stress on fervour and strength of
character. But this misapprehension arose from our having no
acquaintance with Ibsen's Norwegian modeis. From what the
poet himself once gave me to understand, I conclude that some
such Norwegian dissenting pastor as Lammers had more lot and
part in the production of the character of Brand than any directly
Danish influence. It must not be forgotten, however, that it was
Kierkegaard's agitation that gave the Stimulus to Lammers's course
of action.

In Emperor and Galilean^ the Kierkegaard influence, though
still strong, is on the wane. The martyr spirit is indeed affirmed
to be the critcrion of truth, the spiritual lesson of the drama being
that only that doctrine which finds willing martyrs among its
followers posscsses any intrinsic value. But along with this we
have a half mystical, half modern determinism, we have a Scho-
penhauerish belief in the unconscious and irresistible universal
will, and lastly, we have the quite modern prophecy that to
heathenism and Christianity will succeed a Third Kingdom, in
which both will be mergcd. It is significant of Ibsen*s mental
attitude that in both his treatments of religious subjects struggle
and strife are made much more prominent, and are dealt with far
more felicitously, than reconciliation and harmony. " The Third
Kingdom " in Emperor and Galilean Stands as indistinctly in the
background as does the concluding *' Dens caritatis " of Brand,

Ibsen's mind has also been occupied by a class of subject
which has received abundant and varied treatment in the modern
litcrature of Russia, Germany, Denmark, and Norway, the subject
whose interest lies in the relation to each other of two successive
periods or gcncrations, or simply of two ages of human life.
During his first period he treated such a subject in The Pretenders^
during the transition stage between the first and second period, in
The League of Youth, Both these dramas are fine works, but in
ncither of them is the strong point historic insight or historic
impartiality.

The Pretenders is not a historic drama, properly so called. It
has not been the poet's design to give us, in a series of pictures of
the past, a representation of human nature as it manifested itself
under certain conditions at a certain period. He does not look
upon his subject from the historical Standpoint, he merely uses
history as a pretext. The background of the play is mediaeval,

72 HENRIK IBSEN

the foreground modern, for Earl Skule is a modern figure. The
historical view would have led the poet to depict Skule as a
thoroughbred aristocrat, and Bishop Nicolas as a fanatical, but
staunch and honest ecclesiastic ; for Skule's struggle with Hakon
represents, historically, the aristocracy's last unsuccessful attempt
to restrict the royal power ; and the Bishop's struggle represents
the hatred (justifiable from the ecclesiastical Standpoint) of Sverre,
the usurper, the enemy of the Church, and all his race. Instead
of this, Ibsen has made of Nicolas a monster, symbolical of envy,
hatred of the light, the discord and division existing in Norway
from time immemorial; of Skule, an ambitious man, who is
tormented while pursuing the highest aims by an unhappy doubt
of his calling and right to do so. Skule and Hakon stand opposed
to each other as the representatives of two ages, the age of
division and the age of union. But, the poet's interest in psycho-
logy being so much stronger than his interest in history, this
contrast is forced completely into the background by the contrast
between the individual characters with their different moral stand-
points. Hakon represents the ** king's thought" he has conceived,
and by which he is completely engrossed; Skule does not repre-
sent any older historical idea, but only introspective self-distrust.
He steals Hakon's "king's thought " that the possession of it may
give him a right to the throne. He does so in vain ; the skald
declares to him that one man cannot live for another's life-work,
a truth which he himself acknowledges. The skald's thought is
not expressed quite clearly, for it should surely be possible for
one man to live for another man's ideas, to appropriate them, and
make them his own flesh and blood, without stealing them and
giving himself out as their inventor. The theft of another*s ideas,
not the living for them, would make a man unhappy ; and it is
this, as a matter of fact, that causes Skule's unhappiness. It
is Ibsen*s nature, however, to be much more interested in the
struggles that go on in the mind of an individual, than in the
struggles between historical powers. What attracted him to
Skule, and made Skule the chief character in the play, is the
interest attaching to his complex nature, his bold, restless spirit,
which even in wrongdoing outshines Hakon's simplicity and confi-
dence of victory — the desperate strength of this great Nureddin,
who, in spite of his desire for Aladdin's lamp, in spite of his theft *
of the lamp, is doomed to go to ruin. That disproportion between

SECOND IMPRESSION (1882)

power and desire, between will and capability, already depicted
in Catiline and in Gunnar in The Vtkings, reappears here in
Skule's Position towards Hakon's thought. Skule Stands face to
face with the " king's thought," as Julian stood face to face with
Christianity, overwhelmed by a suspicion of the greatness of the
force he is opposing, and in a hopelessly false relation to the
grand victorious idea. The psychological interest entirely swamps
the historical.

The relation between two successive generations is also dealt
with in The League of Youth^ a drama which very wittily parodies
\ the aspirations of a younger generation, without at the same time
showing their justification. No parallel can be drawn between
this play and such works as TurgugjiefF's Fathers and SonSy or
Vi rzin Soll , which, while severe to the younger generation and
merciless to the eider, are nevertheless füll of sympathy for both.
Ibsen's pessimism has suppressed all sympathy. The only
worthy representative of the younger generation in his play is
Fjeldbo, a perfectly passive nature. It is scarcely an accidental
circumstance that he is a doctor. The able physician plays the
beau role in modern fiction;he is clearly the hero of the hour.
The reason probably is that he can be made use of to personify
the ideals of the age: to personify on the theoretic side the
scientific spirit, concerned with the conflict between truth and
falsehood, and on the practical side humanitarianism, concerned
with the conflict between happiness and suffering — the conflicts,
psychological and social, which occupy the modern mind.

In Schiller's plays, as well as in those of '* young Germany,"
the struggle for political and intellectual freedom plays a leading
part. Contrasts in Station, too, are a favourite theme in a con-
siderable number of German plays of an early period, although
neither dramatists nor poets generally deal with what we at the
present day call the social problem. We catch a glimpse of this
problem much earlier in French plays, from the days of Beau-
marchais down to Victor Hugo, the question having come pro-
minently before the public at a far earlier period in France than
in Germany. In the imaginative literature of our day the social
questions of the age have gradually ousted the political from the
foremost place. Modern poetry is inspired in many countries
' by sympathy with the humble ; it reminds those in a higher
Position of their duties. The question is not one of those that

74 HENRIK IBSEN

have greatly occupied Ibsen, as a poet, yet he has not infrequently
touched upon it. When he wrote Catilina^ he was too unde-
veloped to have a right understanding of social questions ; but
many years after, in The Pillars of Society ^ he aimed a blow at the
leading classes in his country. As every one is aware, the play
had no social-political tendency whatever; but so deep is its
pessimism, that if one were unacquainted with the general
Position of matters in Norway, and with the poet's attitude to-
wards his public and the parties of the day, one might read such
a tendency into it. When it was acted in Berlin, many of the
spectators (and thöse, as I can vouch, not among the least
intelligent) feil into the error of supposing that it was written by
a socialist. I had repeatedly to explain that the play was the
work of the favourite poet (at that time) of the Conservative party
in Norway. The Pillars of Society^ which is in some ways like ^
a continuation of The League of Youthy resembles it in bringing
out only one side of the subject treated. Here, as almost every-
where eise, Ibsen produces his effect by onesidedness.

The subject of the relations between woman and man has
always been one of the deepest interest to Ibsen, and has called
forth some of his most original, most strikingly modern, expres-
sions of feeling.

In his earliest works these relations receive comparatively
traditional treatment. The theme of The Feast at Solhaug is
that treated later by Björnson in Cripple Hulda — the position
of a young man between a woman older than himself, whom he
has loved as a youth, and the young girl he now wishes to make
his bride — a theme of general human interest, but far from a
novel one. Then, in both Catilina and Lady Inger, he takes the
somewhat far-fetched but striking subject of the punishment of a
man with a dissolute past through his love for a young girl, who
returns his love, but at the same time loathes and curses him as
the seducer and murderer of her sister.

It is in Love's Comedy that he, for the first time, takes as his
theme the erotic conditions existing in his own country. It is
clear that he was strongly influenced by contemporary Norwegian
literature. While Björnson, in his first period, was influenced by
national legend and song, Ibsen was set in Vibration by the most
advanced spirits of his time. Part of the Inspiration of Love's
Comedy may be traced to Fru Collett's novel, The Sheriff*s

SECOND IMPRESSION (1882) 75

Daughters, This daring book, which created a great Sensation
in Norway, made, wittily enough, though in less polished form,
the same attack on engagements and marriages that we find in
Ibsen*s bolder, mpre masculine work. In bis similes and figures
the direct influenae of Fru Collett may be traced. The famous
tea-simile in Ibsen's play originates with her. In The Sheriff^s
Daughters we read apropos of love : —

" Protect then, O humanity, this first flower of our life. . . . Watch
over its growth and fruitage. . . . Do not lightly disturb its first
delicate shoots, in the belief that the coarse leaves which foUow are
good enough. . . . No, they are not good enough. There is as
great a difference between them as between the tea which we ordi-
nary mortals content ourselves with and call tea, and that which the
Emperor of the Celestial Empire alone drinks, and which is the true
tea ; it is gathered first, and is so delicate that it must be picked with
gloved hands, after the pickers have washed themselves, I think, forty
times."

In Ibsen we have : —

** Dear ladies, each and all of you possess
A small * Celestial Empire ' of your own ;
There thousands of such tender shoots have blown
Behind the Chinese wall of bashfulness,"

and the passage ends : —

" Therefore the common aftergrowth of trade
Is to the first as sackcloth to brocade ;
In handfuls, husk and stalk and all, they pluck it.
That's our coarse black tea —

Vended by the bücket."

Ibsen has only developed the simile, and given it the more en-
during foVm of verse.

As is well known, the only thing that is indubitable about
Lav^s Comedy is its satiric intention. The play contains a
Satire u^on marriage, and yet inspires as little sympathy with the
assailants as with the defenders of ^he existing State of things.
It is impossible to teil whether it is the poet's final judgment
that in these matters tradition should be adhered to or thrown to

76 HENRIK IBSEN

the winds. The one thing certain is that he takes a misanthropic
view of the engagements and marriages he sees around him. I
remember a conversation witb Ibsen on the subject of this play,
which turned into a discussion on love as it exists between
epgaged couples in general. I said: "There are diseased
potatoes and there are sound potatoes." Ibsen answered: ''I
am afraid none of the sound potatoes have cpme under my
Observation."

We discern nevertheless throughout Ibsen's works an ever-
iricreasing faith in and glorification of woman. It sometimes
appears in a jarringly conventional form : for instance in Peer
Gyntj where (according to the tradition of Goet4ie's Eaust~^tRA
Paludan-Müller's Adam Homo) Solveig, by her faithful love, saves
the really all-too-unworthy soul of her beloved. But this fäith
in woman, with which Ibsen seems, as it were, to atone for the
contempt in which he holds man, is always present, and has
produced a series of beautiful and lifehke female portraits, such

as Margrete in The PretenderSy drawn in imperishable beauty
with a few strokes, and Selma in The League of Youthy who is
the first sketch of Nora. I remarked in a first criticism of The
League of Youth that this character of Selma had not sufficient
scope, and that Ibsen ought to write an entirely new play for it.
This he did in A Dolts House,

^ In my opinion, the modern idea of the emancipation of woman
was far from being a cherished and familiär one to Henrik Ibsen
at the commencement of bis career. On the contrary, he had
originally very little sympathy with woman. Some authors have
a great deal of the woman in their natures, and may almost be
called feminine in temperament. Ibsen is not one of these. He
has, I should imagine, more pleasure in talking to men than to
women, and he has certainly spent far less of bis time -in the
Society of women than poets generally do. Moreover, the modern
books which advocate the justice of a change in woman's social
Position at first found anything but an enthusiastic reader in him.
If I remember rightly, he disliked John Stuart MilFs book on the
woman question, and Mill's personality as a writer inspired him
with no sympathy. Mill's assertion or confession that he owed
much, and that the best, in bis writings to bis wife, seemed
especially ridiculous to Ibsen, with bis marked individualism.
" Fancy ! " he said, smiling, '* if you had to read Hegel or Krause

SECOND IMPRESSION (1882) 77

With the thought that you did not know for certain whether it was
Mr. or Mrs. Hegel, Mr. or Mrs. Krause you had before you ! "

I do not believe that this was a personal aversion unconnected
with bis feeling on the subject of the woman's rights agitation.
I believe that Ibsen originally had an antipathy to this whole
movement, attributable either to bis education or to natural Irrita-
tion at some of ^he ridiculous forms the movement assumed — an
antipathy destined, however, to give way to a sympathy all the
more enthusiastic. In this case Ibsen's reasoning faculty wrought
the change in bis feelings. Like a true poet, he is ready to
be the enthusiastic champion of an idea which at first failed to
interest bim, as soon as it is borne in upon bim that this idea is
one of the great rallying-points in the battle of progress. And
when, in the last scene of A Dolus House^ we read those words
that fall like sword-strokes, Helmer's —

" No man sacrifices bis bonour even for one be loves,"

and Nora's —

'* Millions of women bave done so,"

words which reveal the gulf that yawns between the husband and
wife, sitting one on each side of the table — yawns more borribly
than the mouth of hell in the old romantic dramas — we feel
not only that Ibsen bas saturated himself with the thoughts of
the age, but that in passing througb bis artist's mind these
thoughts bave gained a power and intensity sufficient to drive
' them home even into hardened hearts. The play made a power-
ful and somewhat alarming Impression. For centuries society,
througb the mouths of its priests and poets, had proclaimed
marriage, based upon love and disturbed by no tbird person, to
be a haven of bliss. Now this liaven was seen to be füll of rocks
and shallows — and it was as tnough Ibsen had extinguished the
beacon-lights.

Ghosts foUowed. Here again, as in A DoWs House^ a mar-
riage is investigated, this time one of a totally difFerent character.
Wbat was specially fine and delicate in A DoWs House was that
Ibsen had granted so much to the busband. Wbat had be not
conceded to bim ! The man is thorougbly honourable, scrupu-
lously upright, thrifty, careful of bis position in the eyes of stran-
gers and inferiors, a faithful busband, a strict and loving father,

78 HENRIK IBSEN

kind-hearted, cultured, &c., &c., and yet ! — this man's wife is a
victim, and his marriage a whited sepulchre.

The man in the marriage into which we gain a deep insight
in Ghosts is of a very different type — coarse, drunken, recklessly
dissolute, but with so much of that power of winning hearts by
apparent good-nature, which licentious men often possess, as to
make it just possible for his wife to conceal his mode of life and
save appearances. By remaining with him, by devoting herseif to
him, she has not only sacrificed her own well-being and happiness,
but has become the mother of a being doomed from his birth, of
a son who, on entering manhood, falls a helpless victim to mortal
exhaustion, despair, insanity, and idiocy ; and yet I — that part of
Society that is represented by Pastor Manders considers that her
sacrifice of herseif and her son was duty, and that any attempt to
rebel against such horrors is crime.

This is the tragedy of the play, and this tragedy dismayed
Philistia the Great even more than A DoWs Hause had done. This
time it was as if Ibsen had extinguished the^stars. ''Not a ray
of light ! "

I In Ghosts the relations between man and woman are placed
in a new light, being, as it were, gauged by the relation of both
to the child. The drama is a poetic treatment of the question of
heredityyyit represents, on the basis of that determinism which
is at presfcnt the last word of modern science in the matter, the
general determination by the parents of the physical and mental
nature of the child, and gives this" fact an emotional and sugges-
tive background by representing it in connection with the more
universally acknowledged fact referred to in the title, namely, the
preservation by heredity of feelings (and through them of dpgmas),
whose original life-conditions have died out and given place to
others with which those feelings are at variance.
♦ The choice of subject here is of great interest as throwing
light on Ibsen's spiritual development. Here for the first time
we see him break through the circle which his individualism is
apt to draw round the individual as such. In a letter of 1871 he
wrote to me these deeply significant words : —

y "... I have really never had any strong sense of solidarity, it has
f simply been to me a traditional dogma — and if one had the courage to
< leave it wholly and entirely out of consideration, perhaps one might get
\^__rid of the ballast which weighs heaviest on one's personality. . . ."

SECOND IMPRESSION (1882) 79

Now, ten years later, his eyes are opened to the meaning of
solidarity ; he has become thoroughly aware of the fact that no
amount of **courage" can enable us to disregard it, biit that
we all, by the destiny of our birth, are bound up with persons,
environed by conditions, that we cannot control. It is evident
that Ibsen has, in the course of these years, been Coming into
ever closer contäct with the fundamental ideas of the age.
y Thus we see him who, like nearly all the older living writers,
at first stood waist-deep in the romantic period, work himself out
of it and up from it, by degrees become more and more modern,
and at last the most modern of the modern. This, I am con-
vinced, is his imperishable glory, and will give lasting life to his
works. For the modern is not the ephemeral, but the flame of
life itself, the vital spark, the soul of an age.

The disapproval which Ghosts awakened in many circles, and
the vulgär criticism of which it was made the object, will certainly
not restrain Ibsen's productive instinct, but at the moment it
discouraged him. He wrote on this subject : —

"... When I think how slow and heavy and duU the general
intelligence is at home, when I notice the low Standard by which
everything is judged, a deep despondency comes over me, and it often
seems to me that I might just as well end my literary activity at once.
Tbey really do not need poetry at home ; they get along so well with the
Parliatnentary News and the Lutheran Weekly, And then they have their
party papers. I have not the gifts that go to make a good Citizen, nor
yet the gift of orthodoxy ; and what I possess no gift for I keep out of.
Liberty is the first and highest condition for me. At home they do
not trouble much about liberty, but only about liberties, a few more or
a few less, according to the Standpoint of their party. I feel, too, most
painfuUy affected by the crudity, the plebeian element in all our
public discussion. The very praiseworthy attempt to make of our
people a democratic Community, has inadvertently gone a good way
towards making us a plebeian Community. Distinction of soul seems
to be on the decline at home. ..."

The storm raised by Ghosts could have no other effect on
Ibsen than that of strengthening him in his conviction of the
foolishness of the great majority. He wrote on this subject to
me (3rd January 1882): —

V " BjÖrnson says : * The majority is always right ; ' and as a practical
politician he is bound, I suppose, to say so. I, on the contrary, must

HENRIK IBSEN

i necessity say, *The minority is always right.' Naturally I am not
thinking of that minority of stagnationists who are left behind by the
great middle party, which with us is called Liberal ; but I mean that
minority which leads the van, and pushes on to points which the
majority has not yet reached." ^

What augurs well for Ibsen's future work is the fact that
in Proportion as he has become more modern he has become a
greater artist. The ideas of the new age have not with him
assumed the form of S3rmbols, but of persons. In earlier years
he had a partiality for great symbolic figures, such as Brand,
Peer Gynt, &c. ; but stränge to say, the more thoughts he has con-
ceived, the clearer have they become, and the more artistically
has he represented thera. His technical mastery has increased
in later years from work to work. In A DolVs House he sur-
passed the technique of the most famous French dramatists, and in
Ghosts (in spite of the unsatisfactory episode of the fire at the
asylum) he displayed a dramatic certainty, simplicity, and deli-
cacy which recalled antique tragedy in the hands of Sophocles
(CEdipus Rex). /

This steady advance is due to the serious view which Ibsen
takes of art, and to his conscientious diligence. He worksex-
ceedingly slowly, writing and rewriting each composition until it
lies before him in the clearest of " fair copies," without a single
correction, every page smooth and firm as a marble slab on which
the tooth of time can leave no mark, j The advance is also, and
chiefly, due to the fact that Ibsen is a poet pure and simple, and
has never wanted to be anything eise. There may seem to be
something cold and dead about an author who never lets himself be
tempted by outward circumstances to take part in any controversy,
whom no event can excite or inspire to an outburst. In all pro-
bability, the only newspaper articles Ibsen has written during the
last fifteen years, are one or two on the subject of his relations
with publishers, or on the powerlessness of the law to protect
him agaipst the piracy of foreign translators — all, in Short, touch-
ing on his personal and private interests.

But it ought not to be forgotten that this cold reserve has per-
mitted him to keep pre-eminence in his art ever before him as his

^ Later remark. In. these words lies the germ of An Enemy of the
People.—G. B.

SECOND IMPRESSION (1882) 8r

one idea, the goal never lost sight of — and at last reached. A more
striking contrast can scarcely be iinagined than that between the
poet whp sits solitary in the south, shut out from the world on
every side, fashioning and iiling into shape one artistic master-
piece after another, absolutely undistracted from bis calling, and
bis great colleague in the north, who pours into the press from füll,
all too füll, hands, long and short articies on political, social, and
religious questions, is lavish of bis name, pays no attention to the
prudential rule which forbids one to make one's seif cheap, writes
songs, makes speeches, . agitates, goes from public meeting to
public meeting,, and is never so happy as when he Stands on a
platform, with thousands of friends and hundreds of opponents
around bim, holding the attention of the entire assembly by bis
daring and his art.

Henrik Ibsen resembles no other living poet, and ^ he is

influenced by none. We might perhaps mention among modern

authors, two who stand in a species of very distant relationship

1 to him, the German poets, Otto Ludwig and Friedrich Hebbel ;

\ they are, however, far less modern than he. In the ferocity

\ of their satire, Dumas and Sardou now and then remind us

\ of him; Sardou's Rabagas (1871) bears some resemblance to

I Stensgaard in The League of Youth (1869). In spite of

\ I the difference of their natures, there is between Ibsen and

I \ Bjömson, whose name involuntarily flows from one's pen when

\ Iwriting of Ibsen, all the resemblance necessarily entailed by

\ (common nationality, contemporaneous activity, rivalry in treat-

ment of the same subjects, and similarity of development.

Ibsen's production of The League of Youth prompted Björnson

to write plays on social subjects. After Björnson had written

A Bankruptcy, Ibsen feit a desire to vary the treatment of

the subject in The Pillars of Society, Björnson himself told

me that he had to erase a sentence in the manuscript of Dust^

because it appeared almost word for word in Ibsen's Ghosts^

which came out before Dust was printed. The fact is that the

two poets have pass^d through an exactly similar process of

development. Henrik Ibsen succeeded in escaping a little sooner

than Björnson from the domain of saga, history, and fancy;

situated more independently, with no home connections, and

Standing, as he did, right in the stream of the ideas of bis age,

he had less to restrain him from foUowing the call of that ag^.

82 HENRIK IBSEN

less native simplicity, and less pious reverence. That the one*
poet deserted the essentially romantic and took to the essentially
realistic treatment of his subjects a few years before the other,
in no way detracts from the wonderful parallelism in the stages
of their literary development. It seems to me that Björnson and
Ibsen may be comi^aired to the two old Norwegian kings, Sigurd
and Eystein, who, in the famous legendary conversation appro-
priated by Björnson in Sigurd Jorsalfarj boast to each other
of their merits. The one has stayed at home and civilised his
country, the other has left it, wandered far and wide, and gained
honour for it on his wild and arduous joumeyings. Each has his
admirers, each his contentious band of followers, who exalt the
one at the expense of the other. But they are brothers, although
they have for a time been at variance ; and the only right thing
to happen — and it does happen at the end of the play — is the
peaceable division of the kingdom between them.

THIRD IMPRESSION

(1898)

THIRD IMPRESSION
(1898)

SiXTEEN years ago, it was natural to conclude a characterisation
of Ibsen with a comparison between him and Björnson. Since then
Ibsen has developed so steadily and powerfuUy, and has soared
so high in his poetic flight, that he has far out-distanced all rivals
both at home and abroad. His fame has in the literal sense of
the Word become world-wide. In French and English, and
possibly also in other languages, such words as '* Ibsenism ** and
" Ibsenite " have been coined from his name ; no other Scandi-
navian poet or author occupies the attention of the age as he
does ; on the threshold of old age, he still holds his place in the
intellectual vanguard, so that his works are opposed, ridiculed,
loved, and worshipped, as only a young or comparatively young
man's generally are.

The features of his intellect have undergone no material
alteration during the last sixteen years; they were too strongly
marked for that ; but new traits have been added, and the whole
expression has become even more instinct with genius than it was. y^
It has, moreover, been the privilege of the writer of these lines to
become acquainted with one or two of Ibsen's unpublished, or
at any rate quite unknown, early works, which throw a new light
on some of his well-known dramas of the same period.

«5

.«,.

In the year 1850, while Henrik Ibsen was preparing for his
matriculation examination, he completed, during his Whitsuntide
holidays, a little one-act play, The Herds Grave^ which was per-
formed at the Christiania Theatre in September and October of
the same year, three times in all. It was never independently
püblished, but in i854it appeared in a revised form as difeuilletoH
in a Bergen newspaper. Twice again, in January 1854 ^^^ 7^\>-
ruary 1856, it was acted at the Christiania Theatre.

If one did not know who was the author of this work, one
woüld never guess it from the work itself : Ibsen is still so de-
pendent on his first modeis. The metre, the choice of words, the
whole strain of the language no less than the subject, the concep-
tion of the ancient Scandinavians, all the emotions and ideas, reveal
a young and enthusiastic disciple of the then aged Oehlenschläger#
The well-written, easy-flowing verses have the Oehlenschläger
rhythm and ring, the figures seem to have stepped out of an
Oehlenschläger tragedy or tragic idyll.

In respect to poetical tradition, the critical instinct had not, at
this early period, awakened in Henrik Ibsen.' He shared the
established views. The interest of the play tums on the warm
enthusiasm for the North, the North of ancient days, which the
poet has depicted as existing in the breast of a young Southern
girl. The young Ibsen perhaps accentuates more sharply than
Oehlenschläger is in the habit of doing, the coarseness and
cruelty attendant on the Viking expeditions; yet he sees them
in a most poetical light, a light which falls upon them very
strongly in the devotion of the fair young foreigner to the
Northern heroes. Blanka in this play, fascinated by the exploits
of the blue-eyed sea-kings, dreams of the North, longs for the
North, in much the same way in which the young English girl, Miss
Carteret, in Oehlenschläger*s Tordenskjoldy lives a life of rapturous
devotion to the Danish naval hero whom she has never seen, and
Maria in The Varangians adores Harald Haardraade.

THIRD IMPRESSION (1898) 8^

Th^ play seems to cpnvey the idea that the vigorous life öf
that time had deserted the South to flourish in the North. In the
South it had long ago flowered in glorious deeds and in great
Works of art ; liow life there was " chiselled and painted," as the
poem says; but in the North, where nature was stern and art
not yet in existence, it pulsated strongly. But this was precisely
Oehlenschläger's view as well.

. In. Ibsen, however, the exaltation of Northern heathenism at
the expense of Southern Christianity is not so striking as in
Oehlenschläger's Earl Hakon^ Palnatoke^ and The Varangians,
Blanka's praying for her enemies astounds the heathen prince.
In vain does the yoüng Northerner attempt to steel himself against
the strong impression made by this superior excellence. Oehlen-
schläger's Auden (Odin) in Earl Hakotiy addressing Olaf Tryg-
vason, the introducer of Christianity, uses the famous words —

" Boy, let my fir-trees stand ! "

Ibsen's Gandolf replies in the same strain to Blanka, when she
declares that if her faith were planted in northern soil, flowers
would Cover the naked mountain sides —

" Let the mountain stand
With naked sides, until time levels it."

But Blanka triumphs, and in her person the spirit of a new age
accompanies the sea-king to his home. By her influence his
character is softened and ennobled. In this play, then, goodness
is the ideal ; not strength, but goodness is the greatest thing in
the World in Ibsen's eyes when he is twenty-two, as in Oehlen-
schläger's when he was seventy. To Ibsen at a later period the
goodness ideal, pure and simple^ becomes more debatable, as Aunt ^
Jul ia in Hedda Gabler shows us. '

Faintly outlined as he is, the old Viking who has been left on
the distant island, and who at last determines to end his days
there, is also an Oehlensch läger iigure, reminding us slightly of
the hero in The Two Bracelets. The bard determining to remain
with him, in order to close his eyes and sing his Drapa (death-
song), is a touch of good old romance.

But, in spite of all this imitativeness, the very young poet's
awakening individuality finds expression in the last Hnes of the

V^liaÖ*

■^' die

THIRD IMPRESSION (1898) 89

justly pointed out that, as regards the mutual relations of the
principal characters, Svend Dyrin^s House owes more to Klcist's
Käthchen von Heilbronn than The Feast at Solhaug owes to
Svend Dyring. But the fact still remains that the versified parts
of the dialogue of both The Feast at Solhaug and Olaf Liliekrans
are written in that imitation of the tone and style of the heroic
ballad, of which Hertz was the happily-inspired originator.
There seems to me to be no depreciation whatever of Ibsen in
this assertion of Hertz's right to rank as his model. Even the
greatest must have learnt from some one.

One great interest of Olaf Liliekrans lies in the testi-
mony it afibrds to the strength of Ibsen's enthusiasm for the
spirit and tone of the heroic ballad, though along with this we
have here and there a hint of his instinctive scepticism with
regard to the world of romance in which tradition still holds
him spell-bound. He has on this occasion assimilated various
romantic elements. There is first the ballad of Sir Olaf, who is
lured away by the fairy as he is setting out to bring home his
bride— one of the most favourite mediaeval ballads, the source
of Inspiration of Heiberg's Fairy Hill^ Gade's Fairy Spelts^
&c., &c. Then there is the story of the young girl, "The
Ptarmigan of Justedal" (which was the original title of Olaf
Liliekrans)^ who at the time of the plague was the only human
being left alive in Justedal valley, and who lived there, solitary
and shy as a ptarmigan, until she was found, educated, and
happily married.

The diction of this poem, and of all Ibsen's youthful works in
the original editions, is purely Danish ; hardly a dozen distinctively
Norwegian words occur in the whole play, and there is not a
Single un-Danish tum of phrase — facts which strengthen one's
Impression that we have here to do with a youthful disciple of the
Danish school of poetry. The verses are smooth and flowing,
without any marked peculiarity. The value of the piece as a play,
however, is not great. The principal character, Sir Olaf, exhibits
throughout a youthful, almost pitiable, dependence on his mother,
and consequent irresoluteness ; and partly because of Olafs lack
of energy, partly by reason of Ibsen's inclination as a young
dramatist to produce complications by misunderstandings and
mistakes, the Situation is worked up by purely external means.
The heroine, Alfhild, appears decked as a bride in the expecta-

90 HENRIK IBSEN

tion that she is about to be married to her lover, who has not
disclosed to her his faint-hearted retum to his former betrothed,
whom he is to marry that very evening. A catastrophe ensues,
in the shape of the half-deranged Alfhild's attempted incendiarism^
and her flight. To all appearance min and the punishment of
death await the incendiary, but a happy Solution of the difficulties
is found, and two couples are united in marriage.

The romance in this youthful work of Ibsen's is of much less
significance to us to-day than those traits which point forwards,
across the romantic period in the poet's life, towards the keenly
satirical or bitterly pessimistic poetry of the future. Several
such traits are to be found in the last two acts.

Alfhild is the daughter of the minstrel Thorgjerd, a dweller
on the upland wastes. Her father has inoculated her from
childhood with his poetically idealised views of life and death^
especially of death. He has taught her that death is nothing
but a bright spirit who releases the sorrowing and sufTering
mortal from all his woes, and prepares for him a couch of lilies
and rose$, on which he is wafted to heaven, wherc he lives on in
joy and glory. As early as in the second act, she discovers that
death is not this at all, but the grave and desolation ; and after a
pause, she remarks quietly and thoughtfully —

" Death in my father's lays was not like this."

There is something in the way in which reality is here contrasted
with fantastic illusion that presages Peer Gynt^ and also something
here and there in the construction and swing of the verse in the
romantic-l3aical passages ' that anticipates the strain in which
Peer Gynt, as a youth, rehearses his poet's and liar's dreams.
The foUowing passage distinctly recalls certain lines in the episode
of Peer Gynt's visit to the Dovre King : —

" Tis true ; all this wealth of mirth and cheer
No one knows of down here.
Of the elf-king's hoard have you never been told,
That shines each night like the ruddy gold ?
But if you try to lay hands on't, alas !
Youll find you're clutching at weeds and grass.
And listen, Alfhild — it well may be,
That life's like the elf-king's treasury !

THIRD IMPRESSION (1898) 91

Go not too: close to it, for fear
Those little fingers you chance to sear.
Tis tnie it shines like the starry sky
When Seen from afar; but come not nigh ! "

Still more significant is the passage in the third act, where
Ingeborg and Heming have fled from home, each to fescape from
a hated marriage, with the intention of leading an idyllic life on
the mountain wilds. They are to support themselves by hunting
and fishing. But it turns out that Heming has neither bow nor
fishing-lines, and that Ingeborg cannot get on without her maids,
without Society, without dance and song. Neither of them can
exist except in the society they have just left. Neither of them
is capable, even for one day, of seeing in love the enduring and
sustaining power that will make them forget all privations. There
is here a foreshadowing of the Situation of Falk and Svanhild in
Lave^s Cotnedy^ after Guldstad has shown Svanhild the import-
ance of creature comforts and worldly well-being.

It is highly probable that the passages quoted did not occur
in the original form of the play, but were inserted in 1856.

The minstrel Thorgjerd's last speech is genuinely Ibsenish.
A chord vibrates throughout it which the poet has touched more
than once in bis songs, when describing the homelessness and
unrest attendant on bis fateful vocation : —

" A minstrel has neither house nor home,
He never can rest, for his heart bids him roam.
Whoso bears a treasure of song in his breast,
He is homeless in the east, he is homeless in the west.
In the green spring vale, on the leaf-crowned hill.
He must sing, he must make the harp-strings thrill.
He must waylay the life that lurks secretly
In the torrent-swept rock and the wind-washed sea ;
Must waylay the life in each heart's pulsation,
Clothe the people's visions in melody,
And clear their thoughts* fermentation."

Olaf Liliekrans now exists only in the manuscript from which
it was acted at the Bergen theatre forty-one years ago.^ The

' Olaf Liliekrans and Tht Heraus Grave are soon to appear in the complete
populär edition of Ibsen's works now in course of publication in Copenhagen.
German translations of them have already appeared in Vol. II. cf Henrik Ibsen' s
Sämtliche Werke, Berlin : S« Fischer,' 1898.

92 HENRIK IBSEN

play did not greatly please the local critics, and can scarcely have
satisfied its author, since he has never taken any Steps towards
Publishing it. Now, when every stage in his development is of
importance to us, the old play presents no small historic and
psychological interest Just as Catilina marks his point of depar-
ture as a revolutionary, so Olaf Liliekrans marks his point of
departure as a romanticist, and at the same time indicates his first
doubts of that romance which disregards experience and reality.

Olaf Liliekrans leads us up to The Feast at Solhaug.

In the preface to the second edition of the latter play, Henrik
Ibsen has given such a füll account of its origin and its first
reception, that hardly anything remains to be said. Who can
understand the origin of a work, the internal and extemal causes
that produced it, so well as its creator ? And how imperfect is
everything that another can say about it, in comparison with a
frank and exhaustive stateifient by the author !

We can only wish that Ibsen had given us a similar history
of the origin of all his works.

His Statement, however, is perhaps not altogether exhaustive.
Both as a poet and as a human being he is far too reserved for
that In his preface he only touches lightly on the fact that
behind the poetical emotions and literary theories that gave birth
to this composition, there lay personal experiences. Speaking of
the reasons that led him to write this 'lyric-romantic play before
the previously-planned Vikings, he says quite briefly: "Most
of them, and presumably the strongest and most decisive, were
of a personal nature ; but I think, too, that my careful study of
Landstad's collection of Norwegian folk-songs and ballads about
this time was not altogether without significance." That strong
influences of a private and personal nature had been at work
could be divined from the matter of the play, especiaUy as the
same theme recurs several times in Ibsen 's youthful writings,
notably in Tke Vikings^ published two years later.

It is not for a critic who has received no private Information
whatever from the author, to say where the personal dement
cpmes in. He can only point out that the play is young, that it
aflfects the senses like youthful, emotional music, and that youthful
experiences must lie behind it — experiences such as few gifted
young men escape. There is the young, passionate woman, whom
the youth has known and feit drawn to when she was yet half a

THIRD IMPRESSION (1898) 93

child, and whom'he meets again when she has married another,
has been disappointed in her marriage, and still cherishes the
memory of the friend of her early youth. There i& the contrast
between the two women, the one passionate, maddened, tempting
and tempted to crime, the other artlessly loving and devoted.
Finally, the chief male character is a poet. He had sung himself
into Margit's heart, as he three years afterwards sings himself
into Signe's. And he is an outlawed poet, outlawed as Ibsen
must long have feit himself to be, and homeless, as Thorgjerd in
Olaf Liliekrans was homeless. The theme of The Feast at
Solhaug\% fate's disentanglement of the young knight and singer
from the net wound round him by the first fancy he has aroused
in a woman's heart.

The little poem is beautifully rounded off, harmonious and
complete, with no irrelevant detail, and every action psychologi-
cally motived. The increasing agony of mind that brings Margit
to the brink of crime is depicted with unerring dramatic power.
The powers of darkness that possess her soul are made trans-
parently clear to us. Indeed, all the characters have the quality
of transparence ; they are like the figures in a painted window,
warm in colour, clear and bright, lightly and yet quite distinctiy
outlined. £The most elaborated one is the only one that has a
slightly comical touch about it, approaching caricature — Margit's
husband, the worthy, stupid, narrow-minded, tactless knight,''
Bengt. In him we dimly discern the prototype of George Tesman
in Hedda Gable r, \

The play iS'written in alternating verse and prose, the transi-
tions so skilfully managed that there is never the least awkward-
ness. From the most commonplace dialogue, the language rises
to lyric fervour and the impetus of passion. The conclusion of
the second act, with the song in which Gudmund rejects Margit's
love, and the story in which Margit depicts the anguish the slight
causes her, reveals the future master of indirectly-expressed
emotion and dramatic contrast.

We feel that The Feast at Solhaug is written by a young
romanticist, who has purposely deprived bis subject of its tragic
sting in order that all may end in lyric calm, but in whom, never-
theless, dwells the spirit of the tragedian who will become great
only on the day when merciless love of truth has made him
indifferent to all cheap final harmony.

94 HENRIK IBSEN

Lady Inger, which was written in Bergen in the winter of
1854, performed for the first time at the Bergen theatre on
January 2, 1855, printed (only a few copies) in 1857, finally
published in a slightly revised form in 1874, and afterwards
performed in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Germany, is,
beyond comparison, the best of the works produced by Henrik
Ibsen before.his thirtieth year. The subject is Norwegian and
patriotic, and the play was written for the anniversary of the
foundation of the Bergen Theatre. It is evidently an expression
of the young poet's warm patriotic feeling, and it is not surprising
that its sting should be directed against Denmark ; this lay partly
in the nature of the play, partly in the antagonistic attitude
towards everything Danish which Norwegian national feeling
assumed as long as the Danish accent prevailed on the stage of the
Christiania Theatre, and emancipation from this and other tradi-
tiohs of the Danish period was being aimed at.

Historical in as far as the names of the characters^are con-
cerned, the play does not in any particular represent actual
historical circumstances and events. The real Lady Inger was
not a representative of the anti-Danish movement in Norway;
she had nothing whatever to sufFer from the marriage of her
daughters with Danish noblemen ; the "Dalejunker'' (the Nils
Stenssön of the play), to whom she betrothed one of her daughters,
was not her son, and was not even Sten Sture's, although she
thought he was. Nils Lykke, to whom Ibsen has transferred
certain traits which in song and legend are attributed to the
Danish nobleman, Kai Lykke, was not the irresistible seducer of
the play, but was first married to Lady Inger's daughter Eline,
and, after her death, had a liaison with her second daughter,
Lucia, which, according to the views of that period, was regarded
as incest, and resulted in bis imprisonment and death.

Ibsen has re-cast all these characters and circumstances. Out
of nothing he has created a national heroine, whose mission it
is to set her country free, but who, by an unhappy fate, feels
herseif continually checked and hampered in carry ing out her
purpose by her fears for her illegitimate son, exposed, as a kind
of hostage, to the enemy's vengeance. Ibsen has succeeded in
endowing this figure with tragic grandeur. Then, out of bis own
imagination, he has modelled the other principal character, the
Danish knight, Nils Lykke, the ambitious diplomatist and clever

THIRD IMPRESSION (1898) 95

intriguer, whose power over the young women who cross his
path has become proverbial among his . contemporaries. This
iigure is perhaps less original than the iirst, but it possesses
inward coherence, clearness of outline, vigorous life, and it Stands
firmly on its feet. Finally, he has here produced his iirst fasci-
nating and touching female character, the young Eline Gyldenlöve,
at first so proud and firm, then so rapidly and completely carried
away by her passionate love.

Here were the elements of a direct and simple tragedy. Ibsen
has constructed with them a drama of intrigue, in which new
complications are constantly arising, and the characters grope
their way through darkness, in which they are kept by the will
of the poet, in order that they may go astray again and again.
They are entangled in a web of misunderstandings, which, when
it is rent asunder at any one point, is twined more closely
round them at another, so as to force them to act with desperate
inexpediency. The poet has shrunk from no improbability in
Order to allow of this blind action on the part of his characters ;
Eline Gyldenlöve, for instance, is fully acquainted with the cir-
cumstances of her dead sister's fate, yet has no idea of the name
of the man who wrought her destruction, and is almost to the
last unaware that it was Nils Lykke, the man she loves. A
consistent mystery - mongering is carried on throughout the
play, which alone makes the misunderstandings possible; it is
here for the first time that Ibsen reveals himself as the ingenious
mystifier he still is. Behind the almost too dextrous art with which
the threads of the plot are twisted, one already feels the expert,
the stage-manager, whose study of foreign, especially French
plays, and whose daily experience, have given him an unerring
perception of what is effective on the stage.

At the very beginning of the play, for instance, Olaf Skaktavl
comes to Ostraat, knowing that he is to meet a man there, but
ignörant as to who the man is. Nils Lykke, who expects to meet
Count Sture, hearing that a stranger has arrived, naturally takes
Skaktavl to be Sture, while Skaktavl, who is to meet Nils
Stenssön, is bound to conclude that Nils Lykke is he. Although
the Danish knight does not know whom he is addressing, he
cunningly represents himself to Skaktavl to be the man the latter ^
expected to meet. Then Nils Stenssön appears on the scene.
He too is to meet a stranger at Ostraat, who has not been very

96 HENRIK IBSEN

accurately described to him, but to whom he is to deliver papers
and letters. Nils Lykke fraudulently succeeds in getting these
papers, which were meant for Olaf Skaktavl, delivered to himself,
and thus becomes acquainted with secrets, the possession of which
gives him the advantage over the others, an advantage which is
doubled when Lady Inger involuntarily reveals to him the fatal
secret of her life.

When the darkness has begun to disperse, when Nils Lykke
not only knows that Nils Stenssön is Sten Sture's and Lady
Inger's son, but has also imparted this knowledge to the young
man, who had previously known neither of his parents, and when
the plot seems to be approaching its d^nouement without other com-
plications than those which arise from the existing Situation, in
combination with the characters of the personages, all suddenly be-
comes dark again. For Nils Stenssön's tongue is tied by a promise
of silence that Nils Lykke has extracted from him, so that the son
does not teil his mother who he is, and the ambitious mother,
who has never seen her darling child (a somewhat improbable
sirpposition), takes him to be the rival aspirant to the throne,
and causes him to be assassinated.

Finally, in order to intensify the suspense, Ibsen has had
recourse to an expedient to which he has frequently recurred
in his later plays, in spite of its being scarcely justifiable from.
an artistic point of view, and condemned even by Aristotle in
his Poetics: namely, keeping not only the actors but also the
spectators as long as possible in ignorance of the^eal antecedents
and conditions of the action. The exposition, which is excellent
in every other respect, does not enlighten the spectators in the
very least as to what is the secret that hampers Lady Inger's
patriotic energy. They do not löarn it until late, almost too
late.

In spite of these peculiarities and defects, and in spite of
some prolixity of dialogue, there is great power and tragic
grandeur in this drama, The simplest scenes are the most
beautiful. Nils Stenssön's youthful figure, which comes tum-
bling into the plot with such humorous effect, and which has more
freshness about it than Oehlenschläger's parallel figure, Oluf, in
Queen Margarethe, brings with it a breath of careless youth;
and the love-scenes between Eline and Nils Lykke are unfor-
getable in virtue of the poetic, overpowering passion of the noble

THIRD IMPRESSION (1898) 97

maiden, which is so quickly awakened, and which, by reason of
what has gone before, only brings disaster in its train.

The Chief character, Lady Inger, clearly exemplifies (most
clearly, however, in the earliest edition of the play) the belief
which is constantly expressed throughout Ibsen's writings, that
every pre-eminent human being has a vocation, to which he is
called and consecrated by God or nature, which he dares not
abandon, and cannot fulfil without great sacrifice of inclinations,
feelings,' and pleasures, which, but for this vocation, he might
permit himself and others. Lady Inger is hampered by her
maternal affection. She has sinned against her vocation by
bringing a son into the world whose existence she must con-
ceal. Obser\'e how this genuinely poetical, half religious or
theological belief in a vocation finds reiterated expression in The
PretenderSy Brandy Peer Gyntj Emperor and Galileatty An Enemy
of the PeopUf Rosmersholnty TJie Master-Builder^ &c. It has pro-
bably been the strongest stay of Ibsen's own inner life. Very
significant in this respect is the expression of which he makes
use in a petition to King Carl in the year 1866, referring to
what he regarded as his poet's vocation — " that life-work which I
firmly believe and know that God has given me to do."

In the '* Second Impression " we traced Ibsen's development up
to the period at which An Enemy ofthe People was written.

The hostile reception encountered by that remarkable and
profound play, Ghosts, made an unusually deep Impression upon ,
Henrik Ibsen, who had had reason to consider his reputation
established. Almost all the copies sent to Norway from Copen-
hagen were returned unsold, and the Norwegian Liberal press
vied with the Conservative in attacks on the play and its author.
In Denmark the Conservative press raged furiously against
Ghosts,

That the attitude which Ibsen*s own countrymen assumed
towards him on this occasion affected him painfully is shown by
the circumstance that, contrary to his custom, both before and
after this time, of Publishing a play only every other year, he had
by the end of one year completed the drama, An Enemy of the
People^ which, as has been already indicated, adumbrates the spite-
ful reception accorded to Gliosts, An Enemy ofthe People repre-
sents the infamous treatment to which a high-principled and able
man, the doctor at the mineral-water baths of a little Norwegian
town, is subjected, when he discovers and makes it known that the
water-supply of the place is fatally contaminated. The doctor,
in his simplicity, has hoped that this discovery, along with his
carefuUy thought out plan for remedying the evil, will earn for
him the gratitude of his fellow-townsmen. At first it seems as if
this were to be the case. For a moment it appears as though the
Opposition party meant to support him, in order to use him against
the party in power. But the town will not run the risk of even
temporarily getting into bad repute as a watering-place ; its
inhabitants are afraid of frightening away visitors; they will
not incur the great expense which a thorough re-arrangement
of their water-supply system would entail, and unanimously

prefer to throw overboard the doctor, who will not let.himself

THIRD IMPRESSION (1898)

be cajoled br frightened into silence. Indeed, they not nierely
throw him overboard, but do so with violence, shouting him
down, loading him with abuse, and even attacking his house
with stones.

The present generation has reason to be grateful to those
who in their stupidity or hypocrisy attacked Ghosts^ and pre-
vented its Performance, for having thus provoked Ibsen to write
An Eneniy of the People. The play is one of his keenest and
wittiest, and he has succeeded admirably in keeping the character
of Dr. Stockmann distinct from himself, and giving it indepen-
dent life, even though he does make the courageous and
humorous physician very plainly his.own mouthpiece in the great
speech of the fourth act.

In An Enemy of the People^ the poet's essentially aristocratic
principles are for the first time clearly enunciated — aristocratic
principles which by no means exclude a friendly feeling towards
the masses, and desire for their elevation.* Never before had he
so forcibly preached the doctrine that the majority is always in
the wrong. The play, indeed, concludes with the Kierkegaard-
like paradox : "The strongest man in the world is he who Stands
[most] alone." ^ Not since he wrote Brand had Ibsen followed
so closely in Kierkegaard's footsteps as he does.here. But that
which, in the case of the great thinker who died a generation
before this drama came into existence, was a doctrine exemplified
in a life, finds its expression here in the interplay of a number of
lifelike figures, conceived with a humour and bitter satire un-
surpasseJ by Kierkegaard himself

After An Enemy of the People came The Wild Duck, a
masterpiece, and perhaps the most pessimistic play that Ibsen-
had yet written ; though even a character of such a low type
as Gina, who had been old Werle's mistress before she was
married to the lazy and affected Hjalmar Ekdal, is drawn almost
affectionately. All the light of the play, however, is centred
round the head of Hedvig, that pathetically lovable and noble-
hearted child. In this important work also we can trace an
after-effect of the maltreatment that was Ibsen's recompense
for Ghosts, in the character, namely, of Gregers Werle, who
is a caricature of the man who insists on bearing witness

^ Schiller says much the same thing in Wilhelm Teil:
** Der Starke ist am mächtigsten allein." — G. B.

nX'

lOO

HENRIK IBSEN

^•\

for the truth. After haying poured out the vials of his wrath,
and spoken his mind freely, in An Enemy of the People^ Ibsen
seems to Tiave asked himself for the first time if it were really
worth the trouble, if it were really his duty to proclaim the truth
to average people like his readers, if it were not rather falsehood
that was necessary to them in the conduct of their li"Ces. The
quietly humorous spirit of his answer to this question led to
the creation of Gregers Werle, an everywhere superfluous and
intrusive personage, who goes from house to house urging the
Claim of the ideal, and only at the end of the play learns the wise
lesson that if ypu_take away all falsehood from the average man,
you take happiness away from him at the same time — a truth;
which is imparted to Gregers by the cynically good-natured
Relling, another humorous incarnation of Ibsen himself.

The high Standard of excellence attained by Ibsen in The
Wild Duckf and the progress in his art which it denotes, is best
understood by comparing this drama with The Pillars of Society.
In the earlier play we have a melodramatic ending, the conver-
sion of the principal character, the rescue of the ship, and even of
the runaway son, all meant to smooth away whät is bad and
horrible ; here we have the beautiful and bitter reality of life, the
füll austerity together with the füll suavity of art.

Who knows but that even in Rosmersholifty Ibsen's next play,
there may be a hidden, masked reminiscence of that turning-point
in his literary career, the fierce attack on Ghosts? Rosmer
begins where Dr. Stockmann left o£F. He wants to do from the
very first what the doctor only wanted to do at the end oi An
Enemy of the People— imke proud, free, noble beings of his
countrymen. At the beginning of the play Rosmer is believed
to be a decided Conservative (which the Norwegians considered
Ibsen to be for many years after the publication of The League of
Youth\ and as long as this view is generally held, he is esteemed
and admired, while everything that concems him is interpreted in
the most favourable manner. As soon, however, as his complete
intellectual emancipation is discovered, and especially when it
appears that he himself does not attempt to conceal the change in
his views, public opinion turns against him. The Conservatives
begin to persecute him, and the Liberais beseech him to keep
silence, as he may be of use to them by means of his prestige,
whereas they have no use whatever for declared freethinkers

III

Two years after the realistic Hedda came that profoundly sym-
bolical work, The Master-Builder (1892).

This is a play that echoes and re-echoes in our minds long
after we have read it. And when we have read it once we read
it again, with increasing admiration. Great in its art, profound
and rieh in its symbolic language — these are the words that rise
to our lips; and impressed, without being touched or softened,
we fall to brooding and pondering over its power.

The Master-Builder gives at one and the same time a sense
of enthralment and a sense of deliverance. Ibsen^s Intention has
been to give us by means of real characters, but in a half allegori-
cal form, the tragedy of a great artist, who has passed the prime ^XJ
of life. Solness is not actually a genius ; if he is meant to be
one, some traits are wanting. He has the ^ttraction for women
which jsj)ne attributfi of genius, and an abundance of those vices
that in many persons are a consequence of the egoism which
would seem to be inseparable from genius of a certain type. We
are not in a position to judge of the value of his work, so must
take it npon trusL It is perhaps a defect in the play that no
definite artistic aim, no purely intellectual enthusiasm has been
attributed to Solness, which might have atoned for his very con-
spicuous moral failings. He ought perhaps to have introduced
a new style of architecture. As it is, he says nothing very note-
worthy about his profession but the one certainly profound
remark, that he cannot build houses for people he does not know.
If we do see a great personality in Solness, it is partly because
we go half-way to meet the dramatist, whose means are neces-
sarily so restricted, and grant him the hypotheses he requires.

Solness's radical fault is that mixture of brutality in crushing
older men, and fear of being eclipsed by the younger, from which
even genius is not always exempt. He has been equipped from
the very first with that artist-egoism, without which a füll

Z09

HO HENRIK IBSEN

development of innate talent is impossible. His relations with
old Brovik slightly remind us of Werle's with old Ekdal ; he
ruins him and afterwards takes him into his office. His relations
with Ragnar slightly remind us of Thorvaldsen^s with Freund,
Freund was " a martyr to the claims of Thorvaldsen's artistic
superiority." Thorvaldsen took light and air from his young
fellow-worker, kept all Orders for himself, even those he could
not manage to execute, and under the mask of paternal friendship
made Freundes life with him a life of suffering.

And yet Thorvaldsen was far less guilty than Solness, for he
took with the right of the greater and stronger. Hildadoubts not
that this is her hero's case as well ; whereas Solness's behaviour
to the young architect is in fact dictated by a conviction that
Ragnar is a man of superior ability to himself. There is some-
thing at once fierce and cunning about Solness which the pro-
ductive instinct in him has rendered uncontrollable.

In Sharp contrast to this cruelty of nature (though really
connected with it), we have a morbid moral self-criticism which
at last develops into actual disease — a scrupulousness that sets
down selfish wishes and vague hopes on its list of crimes. He
is the personification of utter regardlessness of others in the
struggle to maintain his place as an artist, and at the same time
he personifies self-torture in his concern for the victims his
development has demanded, and especially in his sorrow over the
wrong he has involuntarily done his wife.

In the eyes of the world he is happy, inasmuch as unusual
good fortune has attended him on the road to fame; but he
suffers perpetual remorse on account of the price he has had, and
still daily has, to pay for his success. Strangely enough, he owed
his first Step ori the road to, fortune to the fire which destroyed
his wife*s old home. It was only through this that he was
" enabled to build homes for human beings," The experience
that home happiness seldom falls to the lot of men of genius, if
only for the reason that the wife chosen in their youth cannot
keep pace with tiieir development, is one to which Solness gives
expression in the words : *' That I might build homes for others
I had to foregp — forego for all time — the home that might have
been my own." And again in this other passage, " All that I
have succeeded in doing, building, creating — all the beauty,
security, cheerful comfort-^aye, and magriificence too ... all

THIRD IMPRESSION (1898) in

this I have to make up for, to pay for — not in money, but in
human happiness. And not with my own happiness only, but
with other people's too. . . . That is the price which my position
as an artist has cost me."

And now, reversing the position, it seems to him that just
because he has paid so dearly for his place in life, he ought to
have the exclusive right to build — the right to hold all others
down.

He had not, however, had to exert himself afresh every time
he advanced a step in his career. Like all who have accomplished
anything great, he did not do it alone. Circumstances — *' helpers
and Servers" as he calls them in his language — accommodated
themselvcs to him ; he, like King Hakon before him, possessed
that power which the " Schlemihls " lack, the power of making
evörything helpful to him, But as his morbidity increases, he
comes to believe that he has a mysterious power of wishing, so
that the thing wished for comes to pass ; where women are con-
cemed, it takes the form of a species of hypnotic influence withouV
the actual exercise of hypnotism — what he has only wished or
thought of takes real form and shape for them. It is by means
of this power that he has attracted Kaia to himself, and through
her Ragnar, whom he fears. And Ibsen leaves us in uncertainty
as to whether a similar relation has not existed between him and
the heroine of the play. It is left uncertain whether or not
Solness really kissed Hilda when she was a child. From brood-
ing over these mysterious powers and influences, Solness has
contracted a morbid dread of being considered mad ; and in this
dread lies a germ of actual insanity, which in the end shows
itself in fantastic excitement.

This man, whom we do not see at any time during the course
of the play at the zenith of his powers, once showed himself at
his best to a young girl. Hilda, as a child of twelve or thirteen,
saw him Standing aloft, proud and free, placing a wreath on the
spire of the church in her native town. This incident, and his
subsequent conversation with her, have created a mysterious bond
between them. During the ten years that have passed, she has
lived in this memory ; it draws her to him ; she wants to claim
the kingdom which, on the day of the festival, he had promised
her in ten years* time; and she comes into the room where he
sits dreading the hostility of youth, a personification of youth that

112 HENRIK IBSEN

is all faith in him, all enthusiasm for him. She has thus a family
likeness to her step-mother Ellida, who also waits ten years
for the Stranger. And she resembles the Stranger himself in
that she does not give Solness's marriage a thought. In The
Lady front the Sea we knew her as the girl with the inbom
craving for strong emotions, for the excitement which makes one
feel that one is really living ; here we leam to know her as the
girl who will not be robbed of her faith in the great master-
builder, who insists on seeing him a second time at the zenith of
his powers, alone and free. This is symbolised in the play by her
insistence on seeing him once more place the wreath upon a high
tower.

In the meantime he has become dizzy, as dizzy as his own
conscience. But at her coming, this dizziness must and shall
vanish. She cannot bear to have it said with justice that her
master-builder dares not — cannot — climb as high as he builds.
rv) I This speech contains the central idea of the play. In order to
understand it aright, let us for the moment exprcss it in other
terms ; let us say, for instance : It must not be possible for any
one to say with justice that my poet in his life cannot rise to the
height of the ideals which he proclaims in his books.

Had the argument been propounded thus, the play would have
been something quite different, something more concrete, closer
to earth. As we have it, it is more poetical, more fascinating in
its twilight ambiguity. Much art is needed to make us so entirely
believe in the symbol that it has not the effect of a mere symbol.
In Order to keep the reader in the atmosphere of the drama, Ibsen
has had to expend prodigious care in the sealing up of all its doors
and Windows, so that not a breath of every-day common-sense
may penetrate into it. Were this to happen, the spell would be
broken. If even one of the characters were once to remark that
it is no criterion whatever of a master-builder's greatness whether
or not he turns giddy when climbing a church spire, the sentiment '
and the symbolism would fall to pieces. But everything of this
kind is excluded.

And in reality we see Hilda force Solness out of his ignoble
sphere of thought before we see her force him to the physical feat
of Standing on a pinnacle, alone and free. For she is alarmed
when she at last understands the meanness of his behaviour to
Ragnar. She is dismayed by the things he says to her. " Do

/^.

THIRD IMPRESSION (1898) 113

you want to kill me ? To take from me what is more than my
life ? " And what is that ? ** The longing to see you great — to
see you, with a wreath in your hand, high, high up on a church
tower " ; and she presses the pencil into his fingers, and compels
him to write a warm recommendation of his pupil. It is not use
and wont with him to be so noble. But she is the power that
forces him to be greater than is-his use and wont.

And then, the relation between them growing ever more
intimate and more hopeless, the drama culminates in Solness
becoming Hilda's in the only way possible if they were not merely
to meet in the cloud-kingdoms and air-castles of fancy, namely, in ^^
death.

He began by building churches, because, Coming as he did from
a pious country homej he looked on that as the worthiest work for a
builder. When he had lost his children, he resolved not to build
churches any more, only homes for human beings. Then came a
time when he saw that building homes for human beings was
"notworthsixpence . . . menhavenouseforthese homes oftheirs
— to be happy in." He himself had no use for one. He no longer
believes that happiness exists on earth, and now at last he has
determined to build the one building in which he believes human
happiness can be housed — the Castle in the air that Hilda has
demanded of him.

" Tm afraid you would turn dizzy before we got half way up."
" Not if I can mount hand in hand with you, Hilda."
" Then let me see you stand free and high up."

What need for interpretation here ? Everything is told in
piain words, and with such ingenuity, that while it may all be
taken literally, may captivate a child like any other exciting
Story, yet the double meaning of it all is perfectly apparent when
it is looked at in the light of Solness's and Hilda's emotional
exaltation.

He offers her the highest tower-room in his new house ; but

after she has come to know his wife personally, her ''robust"

conscience is affected in the same way as his ; she cannot seize

her happiness, because between her and it there Stands a being

on whom she has compassion. There is nothing left but the

happiness of the Castle in the air.

114

HENRIK IBSEN

^\J

Aline, Solness's wife, is the only one of the subordinate
characters that Ibsen has had to elaborate a little. She is the
simple-minded devotee of duty, the jealous wife, the humble, pious
being who eludes Solness as he eludes her, She is characterised
in the vivid trait that it is not her children's death that has broken
her down — she knows they are happy in heaven — no, what told
most on her was the loss at the time of the great fire of all the
dolls she had played wilh as a child. Her simplicity and per-
petual misunderstanding of things are admirably brought out by
Ibsen in her silly speech about the poor, devoted Kaia : '* Heavens,
what deceitful eyes she has ! "

The part that Aline plays is only that of a hindrance ; all the
real action of the drama passes between Solness and Hilda. Its
light comes from Hilda. This character, in its marked in-
dividuality, freshness, and brilliancy, outshines all the female
figures of contemporary literature. Ibsen had produced no such
effective character since A DolFs House and Ghosts^ nor indeed
any work of such süperb quality, at once so natural and so preter-
natural.

Ever since Ibsen gave up his youthful predilections in the
matter of both subject and treatment, he has been praised and
attacked as a so-called " naturalist." In our day, the so-called
" symbolists *' have waged warfare against " naturalism." Such
catchwords seldom mean much, but to Ibsen of all men they are
least applicable. In his case realism and symbolism have thriven
very well together for more than a score of years. The contrasts in
his nature incline him at once to fidelity to fact, and to mysticism.

Because his nature and his plays abound in enigmas and
mysteries, he is compelled, in order that he may be understood, to
have recourse to emphases, repetitions, characteristic tricks of ex-
pression, in short, to a certain almost broad obviousness. And —
although devotion to reality characterises both his nature and his
poetry, yet he is poet and thinker enough always to let a deeper
meaning underlie the reality he represents. All his main outlines
have an emblematic tendency ; behind everything we feel Ibsen's
undermining scepticism with regard to the existing and accepted
Order of things, as well as his intrepidity in criticism ; and we
rejoice to think that, deep as his doubt digs, even so high and sure
does his imagination build.

The Master^BuildeTj which possibly marks a culminating

THIRD IMPRESSION (1898) 115

point in Ibsen's literary career, was followed by Little Eyolf,
This play, which is one of the saddest Ibsen has written, treats
of the relation of parents to a child. The first act is admirably
constructed; its dramatic effect cannot indeed be surpassed or
even equalled in the foUowing acts, as it ends with the child's
death.

The following lines might stand as a motto on the title-page
of the play : —

^^ Rita, We are creatures of earth after all.

^^ Allmers, But something akin to the sea and the heavens too,
Rita."

Ibsen's whole view of human nature is contained in these
words.

He has in this play, with his usual pregnant brevity, given
expression to his philosophy of life in a new suggestive phrase,
namely, *' the law of change." All human conditions are subject
to this law. The poets of classic antiquity wrote " Metamor-
phoses," poems dealing with those transmutations of which their
mythology told them so much. Little Eyolf is Ibsen's poem
on *' Metamorphosis." It is generally said that all living things
^are subject to the law of development. But the expression " law
of change *' goes deeper and is more truthful ; for change includes
progress and decline, expansion and contraction in a single com-
prehensive word. And in this play we see human feelings formed
and transformed, we see them die out and come to life again in a
different form.

Two questions arise in our minds with reference to any
sudden calamity which breaks in on our lives. We ask first,
what is the cause of this calamity ? or to use the theological
expression, whose is the sin ? or to put it in the terms of ethics
and law, with whom does the responsibility lie? Then comes
the question, what does it mean ? in theological terms, what has
been the intention ? in ethical, what use ought we to make of it,
if there is anything at all in it except pure and simple misfortune?

In the lives of the personages of this play, Eyolf s death is
one of these epoch-making calamities.

In their broodings over cause, fault, responsibility, Allmers
and Rita work back at last to the embrace during which the

ii6 HENRIK IBSEN

child, forgotten for a moment, feil and was crippled for life ; and
here the reader is Struck by a Tolstoi-like aversion for the
"creature of earth" and his attributes, in the ugly light which is
thrown upon the strong, healthy love of man and wife. A kind
of dualism has always been perceptible in Ibsen ; he pleads the
cause of nature, and he castigates nature with mystic morality ;
only sometimes nature is allowed the first voice, sometimes
morality. In The Master- Builder and in Ghosts the lover of
nature in Ibsen was predominant; here, as in Brand and The
Wild Duckt the castigator is in the ascendant

The second pivot of the play is the question as to the meaning,
the intention in what has happened — little Eyolfs death seems
so meaningless, a calahiity which cannot possibly bring forth
other fruit than anguish, accusations, and self-reproaches, and
which can only harden and embitter the parents to the uttermost
against each other. But in reality events have only the meaning
and intention that we ourselves invest them with, by the construc-
tion we put on them, and the use we make of them. And in a
manner as able as it is surprising, Ibsen, at the close of the play,
by means of Rita's resolution, gives this incident an Interpreta-
tion, this misfortune an intention. Little Eyolf has not lived and
died in vain, since his death causes Rita and AUmers to undertake
a great Philanthropie work among other people's children.

Among the characters, Rita is the truest and most un-
common. No one who had not a profound knowledge of the
human heart could have produced this type of jealous feminine
avidity. AUmers interests us less ; he is of a finer nature than
Rita, but also weaker in his intellectual sterility; he is, more-
over, less magnanimous than she, cannot control his sorrow, and is
mean and sophistical in his attack on the broken-hearted woman.

Among the other personages Death appears, in the fantastic
and unforgetable form of the Rat- Wife. She is the legendary
'* Pied Piper," converted into an old woman ; and there is a
spectral awe about the scene in which she appears.

Ibsen's latest play was published in 1896.

John Gabriel Borkman is the son of the miner to whom,
according to Ibsen, rieh treasures beckoned from the darkness
of the mountain depths, and who penetrated to their innermost
recesses.^ As a child he heard the ore sing in the mines, when

^ An allusion to Ibsen's poem, " Bjergnianden " (The Miner).

THIRD IMPRESSION (1898) 117

it was loosened ; it sang for joy that it was to come to the light
of day ; aiid John Gabriel early dreamt of becoming the liberator
of all the wealth that field and roountain and forest and sea con-
tain. He would awaken all the slum bering spirits of gold. He
feit an irresistible vocation to set free all the hundreds of millions
that lay in the depths of the mountains throughout the whole
land, calling to him to put them in circulation. He had the feel-
ing that he alone heard the cry. And he loved all this wealth
that demanded life of him, loved it, and the power and glory
following in its train.

For he was fascinated, spellbound, by the power as rauch as
by the wealth. He aimed at gaining control over all the sources
of power in his native country ; and while he lived his miner's
life, striving to get all the veins of ore throughout the land
hammered out, and all the shining gold turned to account, he
at the same time strove to create power for himself, and thereby
well-being for thousands of others.

This is the explanation he himself gives of his character. In
reality, passion for power and an imperative desire for action
were the prime movers in his conduct ; concern for the well-being
of the many followed after, as a secondary consideration. He
began in his youth by sacrificing the happiness of the woman he
loved to the prospect of power for himself; he sought to bargain
her away to a man whose Services he required. In the hope of
attaining his great object, he then risked everything that his
Position as head of a bank made it possible for him to dispose of,
the funds of the bank, the fortunes of relations and friends, the
savings of strangers, even valuables entrusted to his care; and
when a supposed friend disclosed the wild speculation that he
was carrying on, there was a total collapse, and he had to pay for
his reckless audacity by eight years' imprisonment, which were
followed by eight years more of voluntary confinement.

He had always something of the poet in his nature, and during
his long isolation, he develops into a visionary. He no longer
lives in the world of reality, but in dreams and hopes. He
imagines that the day of reparation is at band, that people have
gradually come to appreciate him, that they miss him, and cannot
get on without him ; and when there comes a knock at his door,
he at once strikes an attitude to receive the expected deputation.

Borkman is a Solness whom fortune has deserted; he is a

Ii8 HENRIK IBSEN

Bernick minus the meanness and hypocrisy, though like Bemick,
from considerations of wealth and influence, he sacrifices the
happiness of one sister and marries the other. (It may be
remarked in parenthesis, that it is stränge how frequently the
theme of a man's relations to two sisters occurs in Ibsen's plays —
we have it as far back as Catilina^ then in Lady Inger of Ostraatj
then in Tke Pillars of Society ^ and now here.) We are even
metimes faintly reminded of The Wild Duck. The dream-life
that Borkman leads in the upper story of the Rentheim family
mansion suggests a reminiscence of what went on in the wild-
duck's loft, and Borkman compares himself to a wounded bird.

Was he ever really great ? Ibsen's intention seems to be to
represent him as originally a man of extraordinary powers. If
this be the case, we ought perhaps to have some better guarantee
for his powers than his own words and his own overweening self-
confidence. None of the other characters in the play vouch for
Borkman's genius. We have only his own assertions to go by,
and it must always be a difficult task for the actor to give
them the additional weight imparted by intelligent interpretation.
Borkman's own words do not convince me, for one, that he has
ever possessed true genius; and if he lacks that, the sympathy
which he requires from the spectator will necessarily be greatly
diminished. He calls himself, it is true, an exceptional man, in
whom unusual conduct is permissible; he talks of the curse which
" we exceptional, chosen people have to bear," that of being mis-
understood by the average man. He has, moreover, a strong
conviction of the wonderful things he could have accomplished, if
&c,f and of what he could still accomplish, if only^ &c. But
genius does not use the words "if" and "if only." This is the
language of the unfortunates who mistake themselves for geniuses ;
the legion of the unsuccessful men of medium ability, in whom
nothing is really great but their vanity.

Perhaps a critic has a quicker ear than others for the hollow
ring in Borkman's outburst of self-esteem — for a critic is a
physician in the great hospital for sick and wounded vanities,
who has spent his life wading in them, wandering about among
them, listening to their complaints, their boastings, all the utter-
ances of their self-importance. He is not disposed to credit any
man with true genius who has failed in doing the work of a
genius, and has only succeeded in acquiring the inhumanity, the

THIRD IMPRESSION (1898) 119

inconsiderateness, the indifference to the life-work of others
which genius is commonly credited with, which one sometimes
has to forgive or overlook in it, and which, in any case, is the
easiest part of it to acquire, yet the part from which the true
genius is often exempt. Not a few of the greatest geniuses have
also been the best of men, in whom intellect by no means ex-
cluded heart.

It must remain doubtful how great a measure of genius Henrik
Ibsen desired to ascribe to his hero. There are passages where
the poet clearly enough takes precautions against the possible
over-appreciation of Borkman's abihties. Commercial geniuses
do not generally na'fvely confide their most important secrets to
an untrustworthy friend, and can usually carry on their Operations
without making free with property entrusted to them. A gleam
of melancholy satire falls upon Borkman when he speaks of
feeling ** like a Napoleon who has been maimed in his first battle/'
and the poor unsuccessful poet and supernumerary clerk answers
that he feels just the same. There is only this difference between
them, that while the poor clerk is at times unable to withstand
the " horrible doubt " that he has bungled his life for the sake of
a delusion, Borkman, though he may occasioi^ally in past days
have had doubts of his good fortune, has never had any doubt of
his ability, and just as little of his right ; the destroyer of at
least one life declares complacently, ** I never do any one in-
justice." However, if he has done wrong, he has also atoned for
it to the uttermost.

It seems as though no more events were possible in the life
of the once great banker ; and yet Ibsen's drama presents to us a
whole series of catastrophes which precede his death.

For years the two sisters, his early love, Ella Rentheim,
and his wife, Gunhild, have not seen one another. For years
he has not seen Ella Rentheim. For years he has not seen his
wife either; for though she lives in the same house, she shuns
and hates him on account of the dishonour he has brought upon
their name, upon her, and upon her son. In the first act we
have the meeting between the two sisters, in the second act, the
meeting between Ella and Borkman, in the third act the first
conversation between Borkman and his wife ; and these three
principal scenes, which were prescribed by the nature of the
plot, are all executed with the same consummate skill. From

120 HENRIK IBSEN

time iramemorial few situations have been so effective on the
stage as meetings after long Separation. And here we have
three directly and inevitably following one another.

There is in reality a fourth*, namely, Ella's meeting with
Borkman's son, Erhart, whom, in the family's worst days, she
had taken and educated as her adopted son, but whom the mother
had claimed again on the completion of his fourteenth year. He
is now twenty-three, and is the central point in the action of the
play. The two sisters contend for him with jealous affection.
The hard mother makes an idol of him, and has high-handedly
determined that he is par become a shining light, in the brightness
of whose renown the father's shame will be forgotten ; the adop-
tive mother, a rare and proud character, comes, knowing herseif
to be dying, to spend her last days near him, her one aim, how-
ever, being his happiness. The struggle between the two sisters
for the youth's affections is a hard one. Towards the end of the
play we have the father also making an appeal to his son ; after
all the years he has wasted in inactivity, he dreams of regain-
ing a Position for himself, and desires his son's assistance in
doing so.

Ibsen was early and deeply engrossed by the subject of the
relations between parents and their children, especially the
relations of father and son. In TAe Pillars of Society^ at the
moment when Bernick believes that he has lost his son, his Olaf,
he recognises that he has " never really possessed " him. Allmers,
in Little Eyolf acknowledges in the self-same words that he has
*' never really possessed " his own child. The parents did nothing
to win him. The same proves to be the case here ; neither
mother, nor adoptive mother, nor father, own their son. But
whereas in the earlier plays this is represented as exclusively the
fault of the parents, the conception of the position here is quite
different — it goes far deeper. It is true that Mrs. Borkman, like
Allmers, is determined to make use of her son for her own pur-
poses, without giving any consideration to what ought to be
decisive, the bent of the young man 's own nature. But the
parents here, and especially the adoptive mother, are more
serious-minded, have far more ability and strength of character
than the son. The demands made on him by his eiders produce
no Impression on his insignificance, his youthful, pleasure-loving
nature. He will neither be a genius, as his mother expects of

THIRD IMPRESSION (1898) 121

him, nor will he work, as his father hopes; he will not even
bestow his society upon his dying benefactress during the last
few months of her life. He has made his choice ; he will go out
into the wide world with the beautiful Mrs. Wilton, who is the
personification of a not particularly high-flying type of the joy
of life.

In what.a masterly way is this lady painted, and in how few^
strokes of the brush ; she who " is quite used to saying both ' yes '
and * no' on her own account ! " And what a delicate little touch it is
that whereas Ibsen introduces her to us as a lady " in the thirties ''
— over thirty therefore — she herseif, on the one occasion on which
she mentions her age, says to Erhart's mother, " Again and again
Tve reminded him that I am seven years older than he " — that is
to say, than the youth of twenty-three ! She forgets a few years.
Finally, we have all her practica! wisdom in the speech in which
she explains to the mother, half in jest, that she is taking little
Frida Foldal with her in case of accidents : " When Erhart is done
with me — and I with him — then it will be well for us both that
he, poor fellow, should have some one to fall back upon. . . .
/ shall manage well enough for myself, I assure you." It would
be impossible to portray a character more fully in a whole novel
than is done here in half a score of short speeches.

And every single one of the personages who appear in this
play is modelled for all time with the same monumental strength.

The construction of the drama is beyond all praise. It rises
to its height of four stories as if built of iron on a foundation of
granite, firm and strong, clear and simple. From beginning to
end it is instinct with feeling ; there is intensity of feeling in the
kingdom of humbled self-righteousness in the lowest story, and
intensity of feeling in the shadow-kingdom above ; in the end it is
the open-air feeling that prevails, and under its sway the man who
has so long been a captive draws his last breath. The dramatic
storm-blast sweeps through the play. The pulse of the drama
beats as fastas if it were keeping time with the pulse of a young
po,et. There are only minutes between the four acts — only one
minute indeed — so youthful is the impetus of the action.

But the spirit of the play reveals sufficiently that its author is
no longer a young man. It is the spirit of wisdom — of stern
wisdom and radiant gentleness. Its upshot is a great forbearance
towards human failings, which harmonises perfectly with severe

122 HENRIK IBSEN

condemnation of hardness of heart — a deep compassion without
any relaxation of moral fibre.

The Master- Builder^ Little Eyolf^ ^xi^John Gabriel Rorkman
are the first dramas that Ibsen, after a voluntary exile of nearly
a generation, has written on Norwegian soil. He returned to
Norway in 1891, and since then has lived in bis native land. If
in bis young days be met witb scant appreciation from bis own
people, now, in bis later years, be is admired and idolised by tbe
Norwegians as tbeir cbief title to world-wide renown.

Scandinavian literature is a different tbing now from what it
was at tbe time wben be made a name witb Brandy or wben be
opened up new patbs witb bis dramas of modern life. In Norway
as well as in Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, and Finland, a young
literature bas burst into blossom, rieb in fresb talent, great and
small. Eacb of tbe Scandinavian countries bas led tbe way in
turn, and at tbe present time tbey are all engaged in a vigorous,
promising rivalry. Nevertbeless tbere can scarcely be a doubt
tbat Scajidinavian literature bas produced its best in Ibsen's
dramas ; by them tbe outside world can measure tbe beigbt it bas
attained, wbere it bas built bigbest.

BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON

AUTHOaiSED TKAKSLATIOK

By MARY MORISON

INTRODUCTORT NOTE

The follofving Essay on Bjömstjerne Bjomson appeared^

along xoith the second of the foregoing " Impressions " of

Henrik Ibsen, in Dr. Brandes^ s " Moderne Gjennembruds-

mand^^ {^Pioneers of Modern Thought) in the year 1883.

// does not, therefore, present or attempt the complete

intellectual portraiture of Bjornson tohich is emhodied in

the three Essays on Ibsen. It is tvorth noting, hozoever,

that a study of Bjomson xohich stops short at the year 1882,

is not by any means so incomplete as a study of Ibsen

zoould be tvhich should break off at the same date.

Bjornson has done interesting and admirable worky espe-

cially in fiction, since 1882, but he has not, like Ibsen,

developed tvhat may almost be called a new art. Politics

and social questions have to a considerable extent distracted

him from the pursuit of pure literature, and though the

past seventeen years will be of the highest importance to his

biographer, in considering him as a historical personality,

they will be less interesting to the Student of literature,

who regards him primarily as a poet and a creative artist.

Therefore the disproportion between Dr. Brandes* s treat-

ment of Ibsen in the present volume, and his treatment of

Bjornson, is not in reality so great as it may at first sight

appear.

W. A.

.125

BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON

(1882)

In the course of his speech on the occasion of the unveiling of
the Statue of Wergeland, on i/th May 1881, Björnson said —

" No doubt you have all heard how, at one period of his life,
Henrik Wergeland went about with his pockets füll of tree-seed,
and scattered a handful here and a handful there on his walks,
and tried to get his companions to do the same, ' because there
was no telling how much of it might come up.' This in itself is
a simple, touching, patriotism-breathing poem, worthy to rank
with the best he has written."

What Björnson here teils of Wergeland may be applied in
a higher sense to himself. He is Norway's great sower. The
land is a rocky land, bare and uncultivated. Much seed falls on
stony ground and is blown away by the wind ; but the soil, where
there is soil, is receptive, the seed is sown plentifuUy, and
Björnson continues his task unweariedly. Much that he has
sown has already come up, and it is not of the present generation
alone that he thinks as he works.

The introductory chapter to Arne^ which at the same time

forms the introductory chapter to the complete edition of

Björnson's novels, contains, as is well known, the fable of the

trees and the heather who determine to clothe the bare mountain

in front of them. Not aimlessly did Björnson disturb the

chronological order of his tales to place this chapter in the van.

It expresses the great idea of his life, the determination to

improve, to civilise his country by every means in his power.

This determination explains why he, the writer of such refined

and exquisite poetry, thinks it no degradation to do the rough

127

128 BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON

work of a Journalist or populär orator, when there is any chance
of advancing the moral or political education of the Norwegian
pcople by combating some prejudice or error, propagating some
simple, hitherto unacknowledged truth — or what he takes to be
such. He has never regarded himself as simply a poet; he
early accepted a wider vocation.

One only needs to look at Björnson to see how splendidly
nature has equipped him for the hard struggle which the literary
life as a ruie is. Seidom does one see such a powerfui figure ;
it looks as if it were intended to be carved in granite. There is
perhaps no other work which arouses every faculty to activity,
excites the senses, refines and weakens the nervous System, in
the same degree as the work of the author. But in Björnson's
case there was no danger that the severe exertion of poetic
production would affect the lungs, as it did in the case of Schiller
and Keats, or the back, as in Heine's case; no danger that
hostile newspaper articles would kill him, as they did his Halfdan
in The Editor, There was nothing wrong with the marrow of
that backbone, no dust or cough in those lungs ; those Shoulders
' were made to bear the blows the world gives, and to give hard
ones back. And as to nerves ! If Björnson has ever known
from personal experience the meaning of what we call nerves —
and it is quite probable that he has, for not with impunity is one
the child of one's Century — he certainly shows no trace of it in
his writing ; not when he is fastidiously refined, not even when,
as at times, he is sentimental. He has none of that over-
refinement which accompanies a slight degree of ill-health or
exhaustion.

Strong as that beast of prey whose name occurs twice in his,
we see him in our mind's eye, with the massive head, the close-
shut mouth, and the piercing glance from behind the spectacles.
His general appearance proclaims the pastor's son; his voiceTI
play of feature, and gesticulation indicate more of the actor's/
talent than a poet usually possesses. No literary hostility coul4l
possibly crush him ; and as to the greatest danger that threatens
an author, the oblivion into which his name may chance to fall —
a danger which for some years threatened his great rival, Henrik
Ibsen — there could be no question of that with Björnson. As a
young dramatic critic and politician, his literary cUbut was so

za9 T

130 BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON

bellicose as to excite much and noisy criticism. Like Thorbjörn
in Synnöve Solbakken^ he had in bis early youth the propensity
to fight which goes along with strength ; like Sigurd in SigurcTs
Flightf he fought, in the first instance to try bis strength, in the
second from a simple and strong, if often mistaken, sense of right.
In any case, he thoroughly understood the art of drawing attention
to himself.

This is as much as to say that he, with bis sanguine, sunny
disposition, feit himself in his element in the broad daylight of
life. He had none of that dread of the light which so frequently
forms a trait in the temperament or character of sbyer or more
reserved men, who have always something to overcome when
they make public display of their physical or mental individuality.
Ibsen has described this feeling in his poem A Shunner of the
Daylight : —

" No longer night and its goblins
Strike terror to my haart ;
'Tis the sights and sounds of daylight
That make me shiver and Start.

Under the black wings of darkness

I take my refuge now,
There cherish my old-time longings,

Face fate with undaunted brow.

But bared of night's thick covering,

Counsel nor strength I find —
'Twin be a deed of darkness

That calls my name to mind." ^

1 ** Nu er det Dagens Trolde
nu er det Livets Lärm
der drysser alle de kolde
Raedsler i min Barm.

Jeg gjemmer mig under Fügen
af Mörkets Skrsemselsslör,
da ruster sig al min Higen
saa örnedjaerv som för.

Dog fattes mig Nattens Foervaerk,
jeg ved ej mit arme Raad,
ja över jeg engang et Storvserk,
saa blir det en Mörkets Daad."

BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON 131

No nature could be more unlike Bjömson's than that which
describes itself in these beautiful, brave words, which seem to
point towards A Dolus Hause and Ghosts.

By nature Björnson is half chieftain, half poet, combining in
his Personality these two most striking figures of ancient Norway,
the Chief and the skald. By turn of thought he is half tribune,
half lay-preacher, his public utterances being distinguished by
a combination of the political and the religious earnestness of
his countrymen, and this in a more marked degree* after than
before his secession from orthodoxy. Since his apostasy he has
been more markedly the missionary, the reformer. Before that
it often seemed as if his ego were of more importance to him than
all eise, whereas now the ego is absorbed in the cause.

An author may possess great and rare gifts, and yet be long
prevented from making his way, either by his genius being
apparently out of harmony with the character of his nation,
or by its being really out of harmony with the actual stage of
that nation's development. Many of the greatest have thus
suffered. Many, among them Byron, Heine, Henrik Ibsen, have
forsaken their country; many more, who have remained, have
feit themselves forsaken by their countrymen. Björnson's ex-
perience has been a very different one.(^He has never, indeed,
been unanimously accepted by the whole Norwegian nation —
at first because his style was so new, afterwards because his
ideas were so defiantly daring — but yet he has his whole nation
with him and at his backj as no other living poet has, except
perhaps Victor Hugo. And Hugo is not so French as Björnson"!
is Norwegian. To name the name of Björnson is like hoisting I
the Norwegian flag. In his merits and his faults, his genius'
and his weakness, he is as distinctively national as Voltaire or
Schiller. It might seem as if Ibsen, with his shyness and
peculiarity, his seriousness and reserve, were more typically
national than Björnson, the bright herald of the future. But
the Norwegian poets of the eighteenth Century and Wergeland
sufficiently proved that open-heartedness, freedom and loudnessl
of speech, buoyancy and vivacity, also are Norwegian; and in I
Björnson's art, in the creatures of his Imagination, we have the I
taciturnity, the reticence, the shyness, the ponderousness. Free-
spoken as a man, laconic as an artist, touchily patriotic, and at
the same time vividly conscious of his nation's narrow-minded-

132 BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON

nessy its spiritual poverty and needs — a consdousQess tfaat has
impelled him to Scandinavism, Teutonism, cosmopolitanism —
this peculiar mingling of qualities is so typically natioiial that
Bjömson in his own person comprehends the nation. He
represents its self-criticism — ^not a critidsm that cha,sti.ses with
scorpionSy like TurguenefiTs or Ibsen's, but a severe, courageous
judgment, inspired by love, pronounced without sadness. For
be never lays bare a weakness in the correction and ultimate
eure of which he does not believe, nor a vice of whose eiadication
he despairs. He has an implicit üdth in the goodness of human
nature, along with the unconquerable optimism of the pronounced
sanguine temperament.

No other country could have produced him, and it would have
been less possible for him than for other artists to thrive in any
country but his own. In 1880, when a report was spread in the
German newspapers that he intended to take up his residence in
Munich because he was tired of the strife at home, he wrote in
a private letter : " I will Uve in Norway ; I will thrash and be
thrashed in Norway; I will sing and die in Norway — of that
you may be certain ! "

It is a great thing for a man to feel himself thus bound up
with his nation, if he is at the same time sympathetically under-
stood by it ; and this Bjömson is, by reason of the fundamental
qualities of his nature. An enthusiastic admirer of the reserved
and solitary Michael Angelo, he is himself a character of a
totally different t3rpe — not solitary even when he is in the com-
pletest solitude (as he has been since 1873 on his property in
Gausdal), but a thoroughly social and populär character. He
admires Michael Angelo because he admires greatness, eamest-
ness, sad severity in the human soul and in art ; but he has nothing
jin common with the great Florentiners solitariness. He is the
|< bom party-founder, and he early feit himself attracted by such
eager, populär party-founders as Wergeland and Grundtv ig, unlike
as he is to both in his plastic, constructive power. It is a neces-
sity to him to feel himself a central point or focus of sympathies,
and he involuntarily collects a party round him, because he is
himself a society and party mirror.

That he is typically national is further to be ascribed to the
fact that he is a populär spirit, a spiritual representative of the
people. This, too, was predetermined by his nature. He is

BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON 133

populär because he is not reserved and not ultra-refined, because,
to begin with, there was something rough-hewn about him, some-
thing that showed kinship with the many. There are characters
who begin their career by speaking in the name of the many,
and there are others who, tili the day of their death, speak only
in their own name ; there are characters who from the beginning
say " we," others who from first to last say '* I," and others, again,
who begin by saying " I " and end by saying " we." Björnson, t
in spite of his great independence, has ever feit himself to be an \
organ, has feit as if a whole people made its voice heard through
his. He has feit himself, as it were, borne onwards by his
country, its past history, its present aims, and in the strength of
this feeling he has spoken.

All minds of this type have one feature in common : they
have no repugnance to general, accepted truths. However new
and original the form in which they present it, the matter repre-
sented is, to begin with, something universally accepted and
recognised. The very Constitution of these minds precludes any
distaste for general religious, moral, and political truths ; and it
is to this bond with ordinary humanity that they, in the first
instance, owe their influence and their success. Minds like
Kierkegaard's in the domain of religion, Ibsen's in that of morals,
Andrae's in politics, doubt the trustworthiness of universally
accepted truths from the very fact of their being such. The
exact opposite is the case with Björnson ; even in his hottest
struggle with Convention, he fights in the name of the great
majority.

To this he owes his health of mind ; herein lies his strength.
In the possession of too aristocratic sensibilities, too high a
degree of mental refinement, too intense a hatred of conven-
tionalities, lies a danger for the author. Nervous sensibility is
not conducive to popularity. What is far-fetched, cautious,
difficult of apprehension, is despised or overlooked by the masses. '
They demand of the populär orator a powerful voice, a broad '
sense of humour, clear, simple thoughts graphically expressed ; j
and of the populär poet a beautiful, glorified reproduction of j
their characteristics and of their own simple form of art. Every-
thing of this nature that a nation could demand, Björnson has
abundantly supplied.

BJÖRNSTJERNE BjÖRNSON was born on the 8th of December
1832, in one of the Valleys of the Dovrefjeld, at Kvikne, where
his father was pastor. In this district nature is bleak and harren;
the mountains are hare; fir and hirch grow here and there, hut
hoth soll and climate are so had that the peasant can only
reckon on one grain harvest in five years. Nothing would thrive
on the pastor's farm. In the scantily populated valley the houses
lay far apart. In winter snow covered everything, formed a high
embankment round each house, and offered abundant opportunity
for siedging and snow-shoeing.

When little Björnstjerne was six years old, his father was
appointed to Naes, in the Romsdal, one of the most beautiful
districts in Norway. On both sides of the valley rise mountains
with wild, bold peaks, which take more and more singular forms
as the Valley descends and approaches the fjord.

" Peak above peak to view appearing,
The loins of the one at the other's Shoulder,
Their giant heads 'gainst heaven rearing,
Higher they mount and ever bolder.
We stand and wait some crash infernal :
More awful is the silence eternal.

Many are white-clad, many are blue,

With pinnacles pointed, straining, fire-lighted ;

In long chains united

Others press forward like brothers true." ^

* " Hvor vidt jeg ogsaa lar Öjet vandre,
den ene Bserg-Kjsempe over den andre,
den enes Lsend ved den andens Skulder
og dette til yderste Himmel-Brynet.
Man staar og venter et Verdens-Bulder :
den evige Stilhed forstörrer Synet.

Somme staar hvide, somme staar blaa
med takkede, kappende, hidsige Tinder,
somme sig binder
sammen i Kjaeder og fremad gaa."

134

BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON 135

Few Norwegian Valleys can compare in rieh variety with the
Romsdal. The district is a fertile one, comparatively thickly
populated ; the pretty farm-houses are mostly two-storeyed ; the
inhabitants, though laconic in speech, are frank, vivacious and
capriciouS; passionate and changeable, as if influenced by the
" squall-Qords " in whose neighbourhood they live. The striking
difference between this home and the last was not without its
efTect on the child ; it taught him to reflect and compare ; to look
at himself with new eyes, and to become conscious of his
individuality. The grand scenery and the stir of life fiUed the
boy's receptive mind with pictiires. When he was sent to the/
grammar-school in the little town of Molde, he organised unions/
among the boys, and soon became a kind of leader among themi
He already read everything he could get hold of in the way 0%
history and poetry. From populär fairy-tales like Asbjörnsen's,
and populär songs, such as those which Landstad had lately
collected, he acquired the impression of the people conveyed by
the romanticism of the period ; but along with these he read the
sagas and devoured the writings of Wergeland. At the age
of seventeen he went to Christiania to prepare for his matriculation.
There he devoted much of his time to the study of Danish
literature, became the friend of Aasmund Vinje and Ernst Sars,
and led the stirring life of a high-spirited youth. The Danish
theatre in Christiania, at that time under very careful management,
interested and influenced him. He returned home in 1852, and
during the year that he spent there, the life of the people showed
itself to him in a new and still more attractive light, and he began
to write songs in the populär style, which the peasants sang.

After his return to Christiania he brought himself into notice
chiefly as a critic. He wrote with all the usual impetuosity of
gifted youth, added to all the prejudices of the budding poet, and
made many enemies. The writings of the Danish thinkers of the
literary period which had just come to a close — Heiberg, Sibbem,
Kierkegaard — formed his principal study at this time, and some-
what later he began to be absorbed in Guuidtvig[semotionalism.
The insistence of Grundtvigianism on the lawfulness of the joy of
life, as opposed to the gloom of Norwegian pietism, and also its
strong faith in the genius and mission of Scandinavia, had an
irresistible attraction for a characteristically Scandinavian youth
who had little acquaintance with the rest of Europe. Grundtvig's

136 BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON

influenae upon hini makes itself feit until far on in the seventies.
The child from the lonely parsonage, the schoolboy from the
unimportant little town, the Student of a university whose Pro-
fessors were able men, but not in touch with the rest of Europe,
found at that period in Grundtvigianism what he has always
sought, but has since found without its pale — the highest, freest
human development.

A Visit to Sweden on the occasion of the Scandinavian
students' festival at Upsala in 1856, and, shortly after that, a
longer stay in Copenhagen, served to ripen Björnson's productive
faculty. After making a first sketch of Marriedy which he was
unable at that time to complete, he wrote his first dramatic work,
the little play Between the Battles. The simple, brusque prose of
this piece formed a striking contrast to the wordy pathos of the
Oehlenschläger school. It was rejected by Heiberg as director
of the Theatre Royal of Copenhagen, was acted in Christiania,
and subsequently printed. How much further Björnson, and
later literature generally, have travelled in the direction then
taken, can be best judged by re-reading this little play, which on
its appearance repelled by what was then considered savagery
of subject and harshness of treatment, whereas now it seems to
US quite idyllic and much too sentimental.

For some time Björnson had feit a growing impulse to write
stories of peasant life. The experiences and reading of his early
youth led him '' to see the peasant in the light of the sagas,
and the sagas in the light of the peasant." Synnöve Solbakken^
A Father^ The Eagle's Nesty revivified the saga style. And this
style, created in its graphic simplicity in olden days for the
narration of tales of manslaughter, feud, incendiarism, wild and
marvellous adventure, now elevated by its grandeur the idyllic
theme of the loves of the young Norwegian peasantry.

Björnson belongs to those lucky writers who find their style
at once. Synnöve Solbakken^ his first tale, is like a flawless
cast. He had no hard struggle with an unmanageable material
before he succeeded in giving his works their inward equilibrium.
They flowed from the melting-pot into the mould, and stood
before us in clear contour and monumental solidity.

This does not mean that Björnson as an author has been
exempted from all necessity to feel his way, to alter his course.
But his career has not been, like that of so many others, an

•• •• • •

•••: •: ••• : \

BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON 137

ascent in the mist, with a few hours of sunshine on the mountain-
top. It has been an ascent in fair weather, with many a clear
and beautiful view. To speak more plainly, bis development has
been this : Beginning with few and narrow ideas, he neverthe-
less began with the perfection of the accomplished artist, and as
time went on he endowed bis works with bis own ever-increasing
supply of ideas and ever more accurate knowledge of the human
heart. In the course of this progress he may have lost notbing
as far as creative ability is concerned, but he has certainly lost in
the matter of form, of classic balance.

Björnson's first works were not received with unanimous
enthusiasm. His earliest tales and dramas were so exactly
the opposite of what the public were accustomed to admire,
that they could not but arouse hostile criticism. Many of the
cultivated literary class, wedded to the older style, inevitably
feit their aesthetic creed attacked. The melodious tones of
Oehlenschläger's sonorous sentiment still rang in every one's
ears, and to men of the old school his representation of ancient
and mediaeval Norway, though externally less correct, seemed
to convey more inward conviction than Björnson's ; Henrik
Hertz's unsurpassed refinement and charm of style had weakened
men's appreciation of broad strength ; and, finally, in this new
Norwegian literature the reading public missed that high degree
of Philosophie culture which Heiberg had accustomed them to
look for and find in the poet. I still distinctly remember what
Strange productions Synnöve Solbakken and Arne seemed to me
on their first appearance.

Björnson's literary reputation was nevertheless speedily estab-
lished, and perhaps nothing contributed more to this than the
fact that the ruling party in Denmark, the Scandinavian and
National-Liberal party, took this new literary development under
its protection. At that time the National-Liberals in Denmark
and the Scandinavians in Norway were still in literature the
friends of the peasant. They loved the abstract, without know-
ing much about the real, concrete peasant. They had given bim
the franchise, feeling convinced that for ages to come he would
allow himself to be led by those who had given bim '* freedom,"
in the hope that he would make use of his ''freedom" only
to elect and obey them and their like. Therefore they still saw
in him the sound core of the nation, the descendant of the mighty

138 BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON

men of old, and they flattered him and made him a hero of
romance. Hence works which delicately, tactfully, and in a new
and grand literary style glorified peasant life, were sure of a good
reception in Denmark, especially Coming as they did from one
of those "brother countries" which lay almost nearer to the
tnie Scandinavian Dane's heart than his own.

In addition to this, Bjömson's representations of peasant life
had the same attraction for the blasi Copenhagener that written
or acted pastoral plays had for the eighteenth-century courtier.
People were too critical now to want high-heeled shepherdesses
leading lambs with silk ribbons round their necks; but they
found a Substitute for this sort of thing in the Norwegian youths
and maidens whose feelings were as delicate and deep as those
of any educated gentleman or lady.

The peasant novel in itself was not a new literary departure.
Steen Steensen Blicher had introduced it in the beginning of the
thirties with his excellent pictures of Jutland peasant life. In
1839 Immermann, in the masterly tale Z?^r ö^^rÄ^(incorporated
in his larger work Münchhausen)^ half unconsciously established
it as a form of literary art. In 1843 Auerbach published the
Schwarzwalder Dorfgeschichten^ and it was under his treatment
that the village romance became a distinct literary species ; this
was the first time that a German author had devoted himself to
the study of the characters and events of the quiet village.
When George Sand, who was brought up in the country, and
retired to the country again at the close of her stormily romantic
youth, heard of Auerbach's novels, she feit the inclination to try
a similar experiment, and in Jeanne (1844), Franqois le Champij
La Mare au Diable^ &c., she presented France with a series of
delicately idealistic rural tales.

It is Said that Björnson, at the time he began to produce his
peasant stories, had no acquaintance with the writings of Auer-
bach and his followers. In any case he had little in common
with Auerbach. The Norwegian peasant romance differs from
the German in two of its characteristics. Auerbach's works are
epics, which delineate the peasant's life in its entirety. We see
him at his daily work in the Seid and the farmyard ; we learn
to understand his ways — his slowness, his subjection to the
power of habit and custom. In Björnson's writings all this detail
is Condensed, brief, and only occurs for the sake of the love-

BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON 139

Story. Secondly, Auerbach's village tales are written from a
point of view which is not that of the peasant, not that of bis
heroes and heroines. He did not incorporate in them the feelings,
the faith of his childhood. He was the scholar and the philo-
sopher, the representative of all the rieh and many-sided mental
culture of the day. He had been a personal disciple of Schelling;
he had made his dibut with a novel which had for its hero
Spinoza, a philosopher whose works he translated into German,
and whose views he early assimilated, and continued all his life
long to proclaim. He certainly remoulded his master's philosophy
to suit his own needs and sympathies — it is very doubtful if
Spinoza would have taken any interest in those finite beings,
those limited intelligences, whom we know by the name of
peasants. He interpreted Spinoza's philosophy as the gospel of
nature, proclaimed him to be the apostle of natural religion and
natural piety. Auerbach loved to portray peasants, because to
him they were a piece of nature ; he loved to search in these
undeveloped minds for the germs of that philosophy of life which
he considered to be the true, the inevitably victorious one. His
classical tale, BarfüsselCj opposes to the orthodox ethical code
that of the young, barefooted peasant girl with the strong instinct
of acquisition, who, in defiance of the Scriptural command to turn
our left cheek to him who smites us on the right, goes through
life with clenched fists, submits to no injustice, and yet meets
with no consequent humiliation. The tone of these books bears
the impress of the impassioned political feeling of the forties in
Germany, of the vehement desire to elevate the working-man to
the comprehension of the educated man's Ideals in religion and
politics. In Björnson's tales of peasant life the relation of the
author to his subject is a perfectly different one. In all essentials
his view of life is the same as that of his heroes ; he does not
write as the disciple of any school of philosophy. It is not the
superior mind, but the gifted poet and artist, who meets the reader
in these pages. Hence their limitations, but hence also the
wonderful unity of style and tone.

Literature was the gainer. The softest emotions were ex-
pressed in the severest of forms. The soul of these works was
a lyric fervour, which penetrated everywhere, and found its freest
outlet in the numerous songs scattered throughout them — children's
songs, love songs, patriotic songs. The keynote of romance re-

I40 BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON

sounded through them all. It did not seem the least unnatural
that the tale should, as in the case of Arne^ be introduced by a
fable ; aud in spite of the stern realism of some of the character-
•drawing, the general effect was so idyllic, that the small stories |

interspersed here and there, in which fairies played a part, were
quite in keeping with the spirit of the whole. The author was a
good observer; like his own Arne he had the gift of retaining *-

scenes and impressions which others allowed to escape from
their memories, and thus his Observation provided him with a
Store of realistic details. But apart from this, populär song and
legend were the two fountains the mingling of whose waters
formed the crystal of his art. It was not an art which he created
in solitary greatness; through it he was in countless ways in
touch with the mind of the people.

Synnöve is plastic harmony within the limits of Norwegian
peasant life, and its hero, Thorbjörn, the type of the strong, "

fierce youth who must be subdued and softened before he can
find rest. AmCy on the contrary, is the longing to overstep these
limits and be off, " over the hills and far away ; " the lyric,
imaginative propensity in the national character; the Viking
instinct transformed into a longing for travel ; and its hero is the
type of the soft, dreamy youth who must be hardened before
he can become a man. A Happy Boy is a fresh breeze blowing
upon the oppressive heaviness that weighs down the Norwegian
temperament, a glad message of courage and joy, a fresh •

laughing-song that clears the air.

III

Dramas and poems foUowed. The great personality gradually
shook itself free from the trammels of popularity. In Between the
Battles, Sigurd Slembe^ Amljot Gelline, everywhere we meet
the same heroic type, the born chief and benefactor of his people,
whose rights are withheld from him, and who is forced by the
injustice he suffers to do much evil in the struggle towards his
goal. In Between the Battles Sverre himself laments that he
leaves towns in flames behind him wherever he goes. Sigurd's
desire is the good of Norway, yet he is hated and hunted down,
because, kept from the throne which is his by right, he has
become "a king in the panoply of revenge, with the glance of
despair, and a sword of flame." Arnljot, at heart so loving and
so humble, becomes a robber and incendiary, who plunders,
burns, and murders, until he meets his death fighting for Olaf at
Stiklestad.

These characters are rooted deep in their author's own nature.
He himself early became " a sign to be spoken against" With
his unbounded ambition, his impetuous nature, his kindness of
heart, he feit himself akin to these saga heroes. His desire was
to elevate and unite his people, and to be one with them ; and this
craving and the feeling of the occasional discord between him and
them, the feeling that he was at times misunderstood and scorned,
he embodied in these old Chiefs — in that Sigurd who, when
angered, became "hard as steel," yet whose heart was füll to
overflowing of plans for his people's welfare.

There is a record of much silent endurance on Björnson's

part in that monologue of Sigurd's in the second last scene of the

play, which begins : '* The Danes forsake me ? The battle lost ?

Thus far and no farther ? " — in which plans for raising an army,

crossing the sea, becoming a merchant, a crusader, suggest them-

selves and are rejected, until the words " Thus far and no farther "

recur again as a terrible refrain, as apprehension of utter ruin —

not question this time, but answer. Yet love of his country

141

142 BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON

speaks even from the depths of Sigurd's despair — of that country
for which he longed when far away, as children long for
Christmas, though he had dealt it blow upon blow. The great
Personality Bjömson has nothing of the solitary grandeur of the
great personality Michael Angelo. The populär is his element;
when he leaves it, it is only to long to return to it ; he would be
one with his people, and suffers keenly when the desired union is
frustrated.

Ibsen^s is a solitary nature; he is 'Monely, far removed/*
He descends into the depths like the miner.

" Break the way, thou hammer pond'rous,
To the secret Chambers wondrous."^

Björnson's nature does not incline downwards, but outwards ; his
genius is open-armed.

Another contrast between the two poets may be noticed in

connection with this one and with the Northern dramas, viz.,

(^their different attitude toward s natu re. The born dramatist,

Ibsen, is not given to description of nature ; it has no attraction

for him ; in his loneliness of mind he shuts himself off from

inature as he does from human beings. In his youth his principal

!characters were often personifications of an idea, with the want

of substance of imaginary beings. Even when he introduces

I nature with powerful effect, as in the case of the ice-church in

' Brandy it is more as symbol than as reality. Björnson's mind,

less circumscribed, loves to dwell on the characteristic features of

Northern nature, and communicates an Impression of them even

}n drama. The scene between Sigurd and the Finn maiden, one

of the most beautiful he has written, is an example of this«.

Where she comes suddenly on the scene with her dogs she

brings the whole of Northern nature in her train. She appears

in a gleam of the aurora borealis, and the luminous magic of the

midnight sun is feit in her words ; her happy love of life, of the

sun, of the summer, her unreturned love for Sigurd, the delicate

and ephemeral nature of her grief — the whole is a living poem of

nature ; and this is feit by Sigurd. For Björnson has given to

all his ancient Norsemen his own modern love of nature. Think^

^ ** Bryd mig Vejen, tunge Hammer,
til det Dulgtes Hjertekammer."

BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON 143

for instance, of Arnljofs Longing for the Sea^ in the rhythm of
which we hear the sea's monotonous rise and fall : —

" The füll moon draweth, the storm upheaveth,
Their grip relaxeth, the tide wide streameth." ^

Others have painted the sea in its uncontrollableness and
pitilessness ; Björnson paints its cold brow caressed by the sun,
its chilling calm, its profound melancholy, and makes us hear the
lullaby of death in its monotonous murmur. And Arnljot's words
when he teils how, after he is dead, the waves "will roll his
name shorewards on clear moonlight nights," are so characteristic
that they may well come to be applied to the poet himself. A
hundred years hence, lovers looking from the shore at the great
waves Fölling in under the light of the moon, will remember
Björnson's name.

^ " Fuldmaanen suger, Orkanen löfter,

men Taget glipper, og Vandet strömmer."

.1»^ »"^

.^ ^>^^v^ V^^ '^'^ \^:^ ^^" --'

X Vv-^--

^V^-^

♦'S«:"

- 3^ %3.l

^'^ t«---

■^^

t^< -»-

•....r-iT-

vv^

o -

* VX

r ^. V

» -. X

X.v*X •

^—-^

r^"*^

"•,*«»

- ,»-v^

V-*"

».*.

> v^--

•» » •***

-< -«

^^ ' -••*

, ^»

^«

^•.•^

' .«

» ■

^»

r HJf

t -»*-

».^ ■*- "

BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON 145

the details of the action — the assassination of Rizzio, the murder
of Darnley, Bothweirs abduction of Mary — fit into each other,
and produce the effect of logical consequences ; a gust of stormy
youthfulness sweeps through the whole.

The poet's great success in the treatment of this subject is
probably due to the fact that on Scottish ground he still feit
himself in Norwegian air. Bothwell says : " From the moment
that my will Struck root in the soil of events and circumstances,
I have seen it grow above them, with a blood-red stem, but with
mighty branches. The Norwegian Viking race from which we
Claim descent was one of these will-trees ; it was driven on these
shores, it Struck root in their rocks, and now the people dwell
beneath its shade." In this Norwegian -Scottish world the poet
feels himself completely at home, and, without any weakening of
the local colouring, he gave his characters traits that showed
kinship with the mediaeval Norwegian types he was accustomed
to portray. He was successful, too, in his presentation of Puri-
tanism. There was no corresponding phenomenon in the Norway
of those old days, but he could study one much nearer his own
time. For although Christianity had been nominally introduced
into Norway nine hundred years before, it was practically intro-
duced by Hans Nilsen Hange in the beginning of the nineteenth
Century. In the light of Haugianism and pietism Björnson under-
stood John Knox. His other notably successful characters were
Bothwell and Darnley. The former is a genuine Renaissance
type; the latter, in his boyish vindictiveness and undignified
humility, is almost modern. Mary Stuart herseif is not quite so
successfuUy drawn ; there is something too intangible about her.
She is a being the m3i;sterious depths of whose nature are revealed
to US in contradictory manifestations — she is her sex in its
strength and in its weakness. Her fate is to a certain extent
determined by her nature, whose w^eakness is the measure of her
power over men, whose strength is powerless under the conditions
of these wild and lawless times. There is too much Northern
idealism in this character delineation. I do not exactly mean by
this that Björnson's Mary Stuart is too pure, though I believe
that she is. The historic Mary Stuart was not the sphinx of
sensuality, cruelty, and coldness whom we meet in the pages of
Swinburne's Chastelard^ yet Swinburne probably came nearer to

historic truth than Björnson. There is nothing daemonic in

146 BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON

Björnson's Mary, and little that recalls the Renaissance period.
His conception of her is moreover conveyed to us less by what
she says or does herseif than by means of enthusiastic praise or
disparaging mention on the part of others, and by the remarkable
eflfects produced by the exercise of her direct personal charm, a
kind of magic spell the nature of which is not made clear to the
audience, She Stands as it were in a cloud of adjectival defini-
tions hurled in her direction by the other personages of the
drama. Maria Stuart dates from a period in Björnson's develop-
ment when (perhaps under the influenae of Kierkegaard) he was
indined to give psychoJogical descriptions of his characters instead
of allowing them to display their own natures without commentary.
All the personages in this drama are psychologists, who study
one another, discuss one another's characters, and experiment on
one another. Even William Taylor, the page, understands and
describes Darnley's mental condition as a doctor understands and
describes the State of a patient. Murray and Darnley describe
each other; Lethington describes Bothwell and Murray; Mary
seeks the key to Rizzio's, Knox the key to Darnley's character ;
the murder of Rizzio itself, considered carefully, is a psychological
experiment which Darnley tries on Mary, thinking to win her
back by fear, as he has failed to do it by love. These people
may all think like psychologists, but they all speak like poets,
and the splendour of this poetic, almost Shakespearian language,
which is yet perfectly natural — for the men of the Renaissance as
a rule feit like artists and expressed themselves like poets —
heightens the effect produced on us by the profound originality of
the principal characters.

The subject of the little play Married is a simple, everyday
event in human life — the Separation of the young bride from her
parents' home, the struggle in her soul between the inborn, firmly
established love to father and mother, and the new, still feeble
love to her husband — a revolution or evolution which takes place
with the natural necessity and sufFering of a spiritual birth. In
ordinary circumstances this break in a woman's life does not stand
out so sharply, because it is accepted as something inevitable,
and because it not unfrequently has more the character of a
deliverance than of a rupture. But let the circumstances be
conceived as somewhat less normal, let the parents' affection be
unusually egotistical or unusually tender, and the well-brought-up

BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON 147

daughter's love to the man of her choice much less strongly de-
veloped than her filial affection, and we at once have a problem,
a dramatic coUision, a conflict with an uncertain issue. The idea
is a simple and excellent one.

Several faults may be found with the execution. To begin
with the Chief: How can Axel, who has had the greatest diffi-
culty in persuading Laura to tear herseif away from her home, be
weak and stupid enough to allow that home, in the person of
Mathilde, to foilow her on their journey ? Without her every-
thing would have gone more smoothly and easily. We are
certainly told at the end of the play that without her the two
would never have found each other ; but this is not self-evident,
and in any case it is an unfortunate complication. The author's
aim should rather have been to show how the two became truly
one without extraneous help ; it is a clumsy expedient to make a
dea ex machina write an anonymous novel, with a description of
the Couplets own Situation which so alarms them that it drives
them into each other*s arms. In this device I see a sign of the
times in which the play was written. The air was füll of Kierke-
gaard*s theories. The appHcation of scientific Observation and
experiment in the domain of human intercourse, that experimental
psychology which plays so important a part in Kierkegaard's
philosophy, and was so conspicuous in Maria Stuart^ presents
itself to US in Married in the person of Mathilde, the friend of
the family. And the whole treatment of love and passion through-
out the play is characteristic of that period of Björnson*s and of
Scandinavian mental development. Little interest was taken in
instincts and propensities for their own sake ; they were studied
and delineated in their relation to ethics and positive religion.
The poetical representation of love before marriage, or outside
the bonds of wedlock, was looked upon as frivolous or immoral ;
the demand was for the poetry of marriage, which Kierkegaard
in his Either^ Or^ had proclaimed to be a far nobler species. In
the course of the poet's endeavours to satisfy the widespread
craving for morality, it occasionally happened that the passion to
be legalised shrank into nothing, like the sugar in the paws of
the washing-bear. The germ of love which is fostered in Married
is so weak and sapless that it is hardly worth all the care and toil
that are lavished on it. Love is representcd throughout to the
wife as the duty she owes to her husband, is kept before her

148 BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON

eyes as a task, a claim. It is no wild, free-growing plant of nature ;
it comes to maturity in the hot-house of duty, hedged round
by AxeFs tenderness, forced on by the artificial fire of jealousy,
anxiety, and fear of loss which Mathilde kindles. There is an
old French song which runs —

" Ah 1 si Tamour prenait racine,
j'en planterais dans mon jardin,
j'en planterais, j'en semerais
aux quatre coins,
j'en donnerais aux amoureux
qui n'en ont point."

This verse has come into my mind every time I have seen
or read Married. I adore Eros, the grand and beautiful ; but
I take no pleasure in seeing how little weakling Eroses are
brought up on the bottle. My taste is not that of the public,
for no play has been more successful on the stage than this, or
has gone through more editions.

A SPECULATIVE Danish bookseller in the sixties published a
calendar, for which he engaged well-known poets of the day to
write Short poems. Each was to choose his month. Björnson
wrote the little poem of which the first verse is —

" Tis April tunes my lyre !
Then all that's old is falling,
The new life loud is calling.
Who heeds the storm and clatter ?
Than peace there's something better —
The ardour of desire." ^

It is a characterisation of his own attitude during that first
period. He feit a keen desire to play the part of reformer in
every domain ; and in more than one he actually was a reformer,
without a particularly clear idea of what he was aiming at. In
none did he do such characteristic, remarkable, imperishable
work as in the domain of lyric poetry, and this in spite of his
being by no means a correct versifier. His populär ballads and
songs have the genuine ring, his patriotic songs have become
national songs, and in his one or two ancient Norwegian narra-
tives or monologues he has caught the antique style in a way
which Oehlenschläger and Tegndr never succeeded in doing.

As an example of his populär style, take the ballad of Nils
Finn, It is a simple story of a little boy who loses his snow-
shoes, and, drawn down by the earth-spirits, sinks into the snow
and perishes. Lobedanz has aptly compared it to Goethe's
Erlkönig ; and though it is in a difFerent style — burlesque in its
horror, where the other is pathetic — it undoubtedly Stands the

^ ** Jeg vaeiger mig April I
i den det Gaixile falder,
i den det Ny faar Faeste ;
det volder lidt Rabalder —
dog Fred er ej det bedste,
men at man Noget vil."
149

ISO BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON

comparison. It has a humour which resembles the humour of
the Porter in Macbeth^ and with all its simplicity it shows
powerful imagination. The horror of the incident is alleviated
by the comical ending, which reminds us of the way in which
terrible occurrences are communicated in legends and fairy
tales —

" On the snow stood two shoes and looked round and round;
As nothing was there, there was nought to be found
— * Where is Nils ? ' resounded the cry." ^

One has only to read carefully a few lines of any of Björnson's
patriotic songs to understand their widespread popularity. The
most populär of all begins —

" Yes, we love that land so rock-bound,
Rising from the foam ;
On its weather-beaten bosom
Many a thousand home."^

It would be impossible to convey more concisely and more per-
fectly the impression produced on a Norwegian by the sight of
his native land as he approaches it from the sea.

In The Norwegian Students' Greeting to Welhaven we have
a flawlessly perfect poem of a species not much cultivated by
Björnson, with an elaborate metre, strictly adhered to. It is to
be observed that the second and third stanzas of this poem,
in spite of all difSculties, ring as fresh and melodious as the
first. We know how rare this is, especially in the case of the
natural poet There is certainly nothing like it to be found in
Wergeland.

Of Björnson's longer lyric pieces Bergliot is undoubtedly the
most remarkable. It is the lament of Bergliot, the widow of the
chicftain Ejnar Tambarskelve, for her murdered husband, and for

^ " Tvau ski stod i snjoin og saa sig ikring

men de saa inki stört ; fyr' der var Ingenting.
— * Kvar er Nils ? * sa d'uppundir."

' "Ja vi elsker dette Landet
som det stiger frem
füret, vejrbidt over Vandet
med de tusind Hjem."

BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON 151

her only son, who lies dead by his side. How simple and unlike
the stereotype tragedy-style is this wail —

** I'U dose the doors of our home so stately,
Horses and cattle I will seil,
rU send away our men and maidens,
Go forth myself and live alone."

Neither Oehlenschläger nor Hertz would have daried to let a
heroic female character introduce the sale of cows and horses
into her first outburst of grief. I know nothing in any modern
treatment of an old Scandinavian theme which has made the
same Impression on me as the refrain-like recurrence of Bergliot's
Order to the servant who is driving the chariot on which she sits
with the corpses of her husband and her son —

" Drive slowly ; thus drove Ejnar always
— We'll soon enough reach home." ^

The words " thus drove Ejnar always " paint with admirable
simplicity the Chiefs dignity, the quiet majesty of his demeanour;
the other clause, "we'll soon enough reach home," indicates, in
the fewest possible words, the emptiness and bitterness of the
life that awaits her.

^ " Kjör langsomt ; thi saadan kjörte Ejnar altid
— og vi kommer tidsnok hjem."

BjöRNSON attained this level early.

All the best works of bis first period were written by the

time he was a little over thirty, and people were already beginning

to think of these works as of a completed series. No one could

be blind to their remarkable qualities, but they showed no trace

of proper development. Their author's productive power main-

tained itself for a long time at the same level ; but bis view of life

became no wider ; it remained childish and narrow. At times

he could be commonplace; he occasionally wrote a poem that

almost smacked of the schoolboy ; and he gave expression to an

absolutely childish optimism in such verses as Then and Now

(fortunately not included in the second edition of bis poems).

He invoked the Almighty on the occasion of every wedding and

every funeral, printed His actual words between inverted commas

in the poem on Munch, introduced and took liberties with Him

in every Single verse that was intended to be impressively solemn.

He sang of " the child in our soul " ; maintained that we can con-

ceive of nothing higher, nothing greater, than children and child-

like souls ; declared (in the poem to Sverdrup) that he took his

stand on the faith of his childhood, and that it was from that

Standpoint he demanded equality and liberty for all. It was

probably from the same Standpoint that in the poem to Frederick

the Seventh he designated that king " Denmark's wärmest, greatest

heart, his country's strongest fortress," &c., &c. Like almost all

contemporary Scandinavian writers, he kept at a careful distance

from the enlightened thought and life of the day. Or perhaps it

would be more correct to say, that when he represented men and

ideas of the day he did it unintentionally ; they appeared dressed,

disguised, in old Norwegian or mediaeval Scottish theatrical cos-

tumes. In Sigurd Slembe we have Helga and Frakark discussing

the relative theories of the immortality of the race and of the

individual in terms which remind us too forcibly of 1862. And

the chieftains who discuss politics as if they were acquainted with

152

BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON 153

the history of the next seven centuries, who use such expressions
as "a vocation," "an imperative mission," "the Constitution,"
" to base the law on an illegal foundation," these same chieftains
break the captive Sigurd on the wheel limb by limb — a pro-
ceeding which presupposes an entirely different grade of civili-
sation. People who express themselves in such a cultivated
manner do not break their enemies on the wheel, they slander
them.

Added to this want of conformity between the characters'
thoughts and their passions, we have the author*s tendency,
regretable from the artistic point of view, so to concentrate all
his great scenes and characters in the course of the action that
the orthodox faith may envelop them as with a mantle before he
is done with them and the curtain falls. In Maria Stuart^ John
Knox is the one personage untouched by this dramatic irony. In
his case Björnson waived his claim to take poetic liberties, for
Knox was to stand forth at the close with the poet's ardent words
on his lips, and declare himself, as representative of the people,
to be Mary's political heir. The hard fighting in Sigurd Slembej
the wild passions in Maria Stuart^ terminated in sacred song.
In both dramas the action was brought to a climax which per-
mitted of their ending, the one in Ingermann's crusaders' chorus,
the other in the Presbyterians' mystic psalm.

It gradually came to seem as if the author's once rieh vein
had almost dried up. His later tales, Railway and Churchyard
and The Bridal March^ showed no improvement on the earlier;
one of the very last, A Life*s Problem^ was pure mannerism. In
spite of its fine qualities, Sigurd Jorsalfar was not to be com-
pared to the earlier dramas. The Second Part oi Amljot Gelline
was inferior to the First, written years before. It seemed as if no
new ideas were germinating in Björnson's brain. .People began
to ask themselves if it was to be with this author as it had been
with so many, notably with more than one Dane, that before he
reached the prime of manhood his voice was to be heard no more,
because he did not possess the secret of restoring, renewing his
strength. It was evident that he had exhausted his original
capital. Was he incapable of supplying its place by new treasures ?
Like the young Viking about whom he has written one of his
finest poems, he had stood at the heim after his victory over the
old times and their leader, calling to those who were alarmed by

154 BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON

his daring steering, '* Have I your leave now ? " He had leave
now, and he did not know whither to steer.

Those years have left an indelible impression on my mind.
It was with an extremely painful feeling that one compared the
intellectual, and more especially the literary condition of Scandi-
navia with that of the rest of Europe. In the North one had the
feeling of being shut ofF from the intellectual life of the time. We
were sitting with closed doors, some brains struggling fruitlessly
with the problem of how to get them opened. The look-out
seemed hopeless. For 1864 had beaten at the door with its iron
knuckles, and it had not opened; 1866 had knocked in vain;
even 1870 with its mailed fist had only shut it the tighter. It
was a door that opened outwards ; it had to be opened from
within.

For a number of years back an art had been cultivated in
Denmark with growing success, the art of reading European
literature and ignoring whatever in it was opposed to the accepted
national idea of what was to be found in European books. With
whole schools of foreign literature the cultivated Dane had
almost no acquaintance ; and when, finally, as a consequence of
political animosity, intellectual intercourse with Germany was
broken off, the main Channel was closed through which the
intellectual developments of the day had been communicated to
Norway as well as Denmark. French influence was dreaded as
immoral, and there was but little understanding of either the
English language or spirit. In Denmark they looked to Norway
as the land from which the literary renascence was to come ; in
Norway they looked to Denmark, as the land of an older civilisa-
tion, for trustworthy and searching criticism.

Among the most cultivated, upper-class Scandinavians, David
Strauss and Feuerbach were discussed as they had been discussed
among the most narrow-minded, middle-class Germans of the
forties ; Stuart Mill, Darwin, and Herbert Spencer were scarcely
known by name; positivism and evolution were powers which
Scandinavia did not recognise ; nothing whatever was known of
the development of English poetry between Shelley and Swin-
burne ; and as regards French literature, the very newest fashion
was the general condemnation of Victor Hugo and the romantic
school, whom Heiberg, the dictator in matters of taste, had called
a troop of brigands. There was not the faintest apprehension of

BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON 155

the significance of the fact that the French novel and the French
drama had long ago forsaken heroic ;and legendary themes, and
were finding their material in the life going on around the author,
which is the only life he can observe with his own eyes, and also
the life which, better than that of any other time, he can study in
himself. It was seldom that any Scandinavian dared to push
aside the curtain which hid the present from view ; it long seemed
as if the literature of the North were to reap no benefit from all
the scientific progress of the Century.

And whilst all spiritual life was dwindling as a plant dwindles
in a close, shut-in atmosphere, a general feeling of self-satisfaction
prevailed. It was not joyful, boisterous self-satisfaction, for great
misfortunes had saddened men*s hearts and depressed their
minds, although these misfortunes were looked on as utterly
undeserved, as cruel, crying wrongs. It was a dull, quiet, self-
satisfaction ; men deluded themselves with the hope of a speedy
redress of their wrongs, enjoyed the sympathy which a brave
resistance had aroused, rested on their laureis, and feil asleep.

And while they slept they dreamed. The educated, and to
a still greater extent the half-educated classes of Denmark and
Norway dreamed that they were the salt of Europe. They
dreamed that they were imparting new youth to the other nations
by their idealism, their Grundtvigian and Kierkegaardian theories,
their keen alertness. They dreamed that they were the power
that could rule the world, though for some mysterious, incom-
prehensible reason they had for many years'baqk preferred to eat
humble pie. They dreamed that they were the free, mighty
North, which was leading the cause of the peoples to victory —
and they awoke in bonds, impotent, Ignorant.

VII

In the early seventies Denmark was stirred by a modern
intellectual and literary movement, which in the last decade has
produced a new school of poetry and criticism. The intellectual
agitation was quickly transmitted to Norway. There original
thinkers, under English and French influenae, brought about
a kindred movement among the younger men, and Björnson's
writing soon showed that — as he himself has expressed it — new
and rieh Springs had begun, after his fortieth year, to well up
within him. It suddenly became evident that his productive
power had received a fresh impetus. . The modern world lay
open to view. He had now got, as he once wrote to me, " eyes
that saw, ears that heard." The ideas of the Century had, almost
without his being conscious of it, come into contact with his
receptive poet's mind, and fecundated it. In those years he read
greedily books in many different languages and of many different
kinds. Norwegian historical criticism was perhaps what in-
fluenced him first. John Stuart MilFs tranquil greatness and
noble tolerance made a deep impression on him ; Darwin's
wondrous hypothesis widened his mental horizon; the philo-
logical writings of men like Steinthal and Max Müller gave him
a new view of religion, the literary criticism of men like Taine a
new view of literature. The significance of the eighteenth Cen-
tury, the task of the nineteenth, revealed themselves to him.
In a most interesting letter to myself he once touched on the
circumstances which had influenced his youth, and on the
traits in his character which pre-determined his change of
opinions : —

'* Under these conditions I was bound to become Grundtvig's
prey. But although I can be led astray by any one, the thing
does not exist by which I can be bribed. The day my eyes
were opened I was off again. It may be my worst enemy who
holds the truth in his hands; I am stupid and strong; but on

the day that I catch sight, even accidentally, of the truth, that

156

BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON 157

very day I go over to his side. Will you teil me if this is not
a nature easy to understand? Should not Norsemen of all
others understand it ? I am a Norseman. I am a man. That
is what of late I have chosen to subscribe myself : Man. For it
seems to me that with us at present this word is awakening new
conceptions in men's minds."

VIII

The first important work with which Björnson broke a silence
of some years was the drama Bankruptcy, It was a plunge into
modern life. The band wbicb bad wielded Sigurd's sword feit it
no degradation to count Tjaelde's money and set down tbe items
of bis debt. Björnson was the first Scandinavian dramatist who
in all seriousness undertook to write the tragi-comedy of money,
and tbis first attempt was crowned with undoubted success.
Simultaneously with Bankruptcy he publisbed The Editor^ with
its passionate satire on the State of tbe Scandinavian press. On
these two foUowed, in quick succession, A King, Magnhildy
Captain Mansana, The New System^ Leonarda^ new poems,
a populär treatise on republicanism, and lastly, Dust, a tbought-
ful, beautifully written story.

In Norwegian conservative circles an attempt has been made
to depreciate both Björnson's and Ibsen's productions of tbis
period by stamping tbem as works written with a purpose.
Where tbis accusation is justifiable it certainly carries some
weight. Th^ purpose is always related to some one or other of tbe
interests or tendencies of tbe moment ; sooner or later it becomes
out of date, and it may in tbe long-run shorten the life of tbe
book. But we must remember, first, that there are many other
tbings about a literary work wbicb are liable to become antiquated
— its form, its ideas, its language ; secondly, that sometimes, as f

in the case of Don Quixote^ the purpose of the work does not \,

■

in tbe least impair its vitality ; finally, and tbis is the main point, ^^

that tbe formula *' written with a purpose " has been far too long ;

employed as an effective scarecrow to drive autbors away from 1

the fruit that beckons to tbem from the modern tree of knowledge.
The warnings against writing with a purpose, and tbe low
esteem in wbicb such writing is beld, are due to acceptance of tbe
Kantian doctrine of art for its own sake, wbicb in France has
been formulated into tbe watchword, Uart pour Part! Tbis

doctrine (wbicb, stränge to say, has always been resisted in its one

158

1
• ■

BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON 159

sensible and valid application, namely, as a protest against the
imprisoning of art in a strait-waistcoat of conventional morality)
has long been applied in the North to the purpose of excluding
all contemporary thought from our poetry, drama, and romance,
under the pretext that questions of the day are out of place in
literature; literary art, like every other art, being its own end
and aim.

On one side we heard : " Poetry, literature, is not its own aim
and end ; it must and shall respect morality " — morality in this
case being perfectly well understood to mean the Conventions of
polite Society. On another, as soon as a work appeared which
showed the influence of the ideas of the day : '* Scientific poetry !
problem play! Ladies and gentlemen, true literary art has no
object and aim but itself."

The opponents of the new style were under the naive delusion
that those older works which they lauded were devoid of any
tendency, because their tendency was exactly the opposite of that
of the new works. Or is it the case that there was no tendency,
no sign of any intention in these older productions ? Look at
Amljot Gelline f with its obligatory Viking-conversions, common
to all the neo-Norse literature of the day. Hardly had Oehlen-
schläger, Grundtvig, and Hauch discovered these old Vikings
and begun to rejoice in their unimpaired strength, than they set
to work to convert and baptize them. It was exactly as if they
could not hit upon anything eise to do with them, so monotonously
did the conversions recur. Both Björnson and Richardt followed
this lead. There was also a distinct orthodox tendency in all the
peasant tales of the period. This keynote of orthodoxy was
Struck in the second chapter of Synnöve Solbakken^ with a piain
enough indication that it would be retained in all subsequent
delineations of Norwegian peasant life.

Therefore what is objected to is not purpose or tendency as
such, for that, until now, has never been held to injure literary
productions. The public had become as thoroughly accustomed
to the old intentions and tendencies as people become accustomed
to the air of a room which they never leave. What is now con-
demned under the name of purpose or tendency is the spirit of
the times. But the spirit and ideas of the times are for the epic
and dramatic poet what the circulation of the blood through the
veins is for the human body. All we have to require in the

i6o BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON

interests of art is that these veins, whose blue tracery does not
detract from the beauty of the skin, should not stand out black
and swollen, as they do in the case of a diseased or furious man.

At a rare time, purpose shows itself too plainly in Björnson's
writing — at a very rare time ; and a purpose which does not bc-
come part of the flesh and blood of the work of art, but projects
inartistically from the canvas, is not more excusable or better in
Bjömson than in any other writer. I have no great admiration,
for instance, for the attacks on the State Church, standing armics,
and the whole social order of a monarchy, made by the hero of
the drama A King^ immediately before he commits suicide. We
feel that this is something which the author desires to have said ;
the intention is too glaringly evident. That charming story Dust
also suffers from its author's inclination to be didactic. In bis
enthusiasm for the truth he is occasionally tempted to give too
direct, too vociferous expression to it, not noticing that exactly
by so doing he detracts from that artistic effect which it is bis
object to heighten.

But setting this question of intention aside, it can only be
by purposely hardening his heart against it that a man with any
taste for poetry can remain insensible to the» fresh welling up of
poetic inspiration throughout these works of Björnson's second
period — second youth we might rather say. A buming love of
truth has set its mark on him. What individuality there is in
these books ; what powerful appeal for truthfulness towafds our-
selves and towards others ; what a wealth of new ideas on all
subjects — State and society, marriage and home-life ! What
charitableness too ; what sympathy with the men, like the King
and the Bishop in Leonarda^ who represent those institution» of
society against which the poet's attacks are directed ! Nowhcrc
is this more strongly feit than in A King, The fundamental idca
of this play is the pimple and by no means novel one, that a con- '
stitutional monarchy is a transitional form of government, leading
to a republic. The author's originality is shown in the choice
of a Standpoint, in his letting it be the King who attacks the
institution of monarchy, because of the härm which his human
soul needs must suffer from the very nature of such an institution.
The character of the King is drawn with a sympathy, a warmth
of feeling, which make him in the true sense of the word tbe
drama's hero.

BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON i6i

In Bankruptcy we have the appeal for truth on the lowest
plane — as simple honesty in everyday, middle-class life. But the
author's keen eye sees that honesty is not the simple thing it
seems. Thus it is blamable in the business man to risk other
people's money, and yet it is to a certain extent tmavoidable that
he should do so. The question turns on the fine boundary-line,
on the point bcyond which it is not permissible to venture.

In Tke Editor we have the demand for truth in a higher
sphere, where it is an imperative duty to have it always before
one's eyes, and where it is still more difficult to satisfy. In the
commercial world the danger is that a man, beginning with seif-
deception, will proceed to deceive and ruin others. The tempta-
tion in the journalistic world is to conceal or deny the truth.
Here, too, the thing is to a certain extent inevitable ; for a poli-
tician can never teil or admit everything. It is a weakness in
Björnson's Editor that its representative of journalism falls to
represent adequately the difficulties of his profession, the casuistry
it entails, the perpetual, unavoidable difficulties in which the
editor of a daily newspaper finds himself involved ; he is too
much of the rogue. His Opponent and victim, Halfdan, is, on the
' other band, too much of the passive and patient sufTerer to awäken
any great interest. In this play Björnson plainly makes an attack
on the ideal of cool invulnerability which we in these latter days,
impelled by stern necessity, have set up for ourselves. He
protests — on behalf of the child within us — against the doctrine
that we are to be ''hardened"; and there is doubtless reason
in his protest ; but the fact remains, that nowadays we have only
a very qualified S3rmpathy with public characters who succumb
to the persecution of the press. The Christian ideal of the suf-
fering mart3rr has in this case practically lost its attraction for
the reading and theatre-going public; the demand is for men
whom the spoken or written words of their adversaries are
powerless to injure, who are not shaken by even a hurricane of
abuse. I do not maintain that this is a natural taste, but there
is much to be said for it.
1 A King thrashes out political questions, as Bankruptcy and

. Tke Editor did social ones. The problem is psychological. The

I author fights the King's inward battle with him, and lets him

fail in his attempt to reconcile the demands of his nature with the
demands of his position. Is the problem satisfactorily solved ?

i62 BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON

Is the failure not too necessarily predetermined by the worthless-
ness of the King's past life and his weak character ? The value
of the play is not materially afTected by the answer to these ques-
tions ; it lies in the depths sounded, in the fresh charm of the
love-story (remember the scene where everything the King looks
at seems to quiver and tremble), and the sparkling flow of the
dialogue.

In Magnhild and Leonarda the author faces a new modern
problem — the relation of natural to conventional morality, of the
law of the heart to the law of society. The doctrine proclaimed
in Magnhild is propounded in the modest form of a question :
Are there not immoral marriages, which it is the truest morality
to annul ? The lesson of Leonarda is perhaps the one we stand
most in need of in the North, that of charity, of social and reli-
gious tolerance, a lesson which the author himself only mastered
in his riper years. Within a short space of time Björnson has
conquered a whole new region for his muse.

Magnhild is a work which, in its striving after realism, marks
a tuming-point in its author's career as a novelist In some of
its character-delineation we have a delicacy and strength to which
he had never before attained. We could hardly have credited
Björnson with the ability to represent such characters as Tande,
the young musician, and the beautiful Fru Bang and her husband.
And Magnhild's relations with these principal personages are as
admirably described as they are correctly imagined. All the
same, we feel that the author is moving in a sphere which is still
rather stränge to him, that of upper-class society life. It is
curious that Tande, in his cowardly desertion of the woman he
loves when she is jeered at by the mob, has the sympathy of the
author, from the moral point of view.

The Story has two radical weaknesses. One is the ambiguity
in the presentment of Skarlie, one of the leading characters. He
is intended to impress the reader as being a kind of monster,
and yet we find ourselves perpetually taking his part against
his big, ideally perfect wife. It is hinted to us most cautiously
and discreetly that in the matter of sexual morality Skarlie is an
utterly depraved person ; yet none the less this monster of low
sensuality, in his relations with his own wife, whom he has wen
by a not particularly perfidious intrigue, realises Ingermann's
moonshine-ideal of Piatonic affection between husband and wife,

BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON 163

being humbly and gratefully contented with the permission to
feed and clothe the lady. The other weakness lies deeper in the
philosophy of the story. There is a good deal of old-fashioned
mysticism in the treatment of the doctrine of man's and woman's
" destiny," on which the story turns ; and, as is always the case
with both Björnson and Ibsen, the mysticism is curiously blended
with rationalism. The conclusion which Björnson apparently
intended us to arrive at from reading the tale was, that for a
woman there exist other ways to happiness and useful activity
besides union with a man she loves. It is an opinion well worth
supporting; but from Magnhild many other and contradictory
deductions may be drawn. The idea of the book is not clear«
It forms the antithesis of Married ; there is far more distinctness
and vitality in the execution than in the conception.

Leonarda, from the dramatic point of view not specially
important, is one of Björnson's most poetic works. It certainly
deserved a better reception in Denmark than to be rejected by the
National Theatre, and played in a theatre of the second rank
amidst foolish manifestations of disapprobation. Posterity will
have difficulty in understanding the narrow-mindedness which
displayed itself in much of the Danish-Norwegian press's vilifica-
tion of this beautiful and pure work of art. In Leonarda^ the
author, with admirable ability, brings a whole succession of
Norwegian generations before us, delineating the representative
of each with the sure band of a master, and making the great-
grandmother, who (somewhat in the style of the grandmother in
George Sand's interesting drama L'Autre) represents the long-
scorned culture of the eighteenth Century, pronounce the play's
solemn Amen. With Leonarda the time not only of strong
feeling, but of bold thought, had returned.

The opponents of Bjömson's later style maintain that as long
as he kept outside the sphere of burning questions and living
ideas he was great and good, but that since he has begun to
meddle with modern problems and modern thought he has fallen
off, or at any rate has produced no artistically perfect work.
The same judgment has been pronounced each time that a
European author who had won the favour of his public by harm-
lessly neutral productions has suddenly shown his contemporaries
that he is studying and judging them. Everywhere throughout
Europe there are readers who prefer Byron's Childe Harold to

i64 BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON

Don Juan; in Russia and elsewhere there is a highly refined public
which prefers TurguenefFs first small tales, such as A Sports-
matis Diaty^ to Fathers and Sons or Virgin Soil ; in Germany
many ladies and gentlemen lamented when Paul Heyse for a time
gave up producing love-stories, and wrotc Children of this World.
It is true that in. this bis second period Björnson has not yet
attained tbe uniform transparency and harmony of form wbicb
distinguisb bis earlier works; but it is neither just nor reasonable
to assert because of this that he is falling off. A new, streng
ferment of idea takes time to settle down, is apt to bubble over
tbe edge; strong feelings and powerful thought have a certain
iire and impetus, wbicb render them less suitable for presentation
in a perfectly smooth and polisbed form than tbe cbildishly
innocent pastoral scenes of tbe idyll. All tbe same, wbat technical
excellence many of Bjömson's productions of tbe last few years
display ! Tbe exposition of Bankruptcy is one of tbe best that
has ever been seen in a theatre; tbe dialogue in The Editor is
tbe best its author has yet written.

These two dramas, witb wbicb Björnson Struck into tbe patb
wbicb bad been opened up by Ibsen witb The League of Youth^
turn on themes akin to that of Ibsen's play. In The League of
Youth we have both a bankrupt and an editor. The bankruptcy is
that of tbe reckless Erik Brattsberg; in Stensgaard's relations
witb Aslaksen's newspaper in tbe matter of tbe article that is first
to bc and tben not to be printed, we have The Editor in faint
outline. The editor bimself is in some ways an older Stensgaard,
tbe softer and more pliable Clements of whose character can now
only be traced in bis wild fits of contempt for bimself and others ;
wbat remains, and forms tbe leading feature of the character,
being that brutal indifference to the feelings of others displayed
in tbe threat to Aslaksen that if be does not yield be '' shall be
in the poor-house before the year is out." And yet tbe wbole tone
and spirit of The Editor is much milder and more lenient than
that of The League of Youth; bere and there, there is even a
touch of sentimentality. Tbe play is, bowever, apprehended
most accurately and completely when read as a great allegory.
Halfdan, the eldest brother, who succumbs in the political and
literary strife, is Wergeland, who, after a life of noble and spirited
conflict, lay so lon^ on a sick-bed, an even more impressive and
poetic figure there than be bad been during bis long life-battle.

BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON 165

The younger brother, who undertakes to carry on the work, is
Björason himself — " there is strength in Harald." And the third
brother, who is a peasant, and bis wife, who, witbout appearing
on the scene, plays so important a part, represent the Norwegian
people. This drama, like Leonarda^ looks backwards as well as
forwards ; it bas a wide horizon.

Henrik Ibsen is a judge, stern as one of the old judges of
Israel; Bjömson is a prophet, the herald of a better time. At
heart Ibsen is a true revolutionary. In Love*s Comedyy A DolFs
House^ and GhostSy he strikes at marriage ; in Brandy at the State /
Church ; in Pillars of Society y at the upper middle-class. Whatever
he attacks is shattered by bis weighty and searching criticism,
and we catch no glimpse beneath the ruins of any new Organisation ^

of Society. Björnson is a reconciliatory spirit ; there' is no bitter- ,

ness in bis warfare. April sunshine plays over bis works, whilst
Ibsen's in their sombre eamestness lie in deep shadow. Ibsen
loves the idea, the psychological and logical consequence — which
drives Brand out of the Church, Nora out of wedlock. Correspond-
ing to this love of the abstract idea in Ibsen, we have in Björnson
love of humankind.

Even in his youth Bjömson began to take an active part in
politics, and he may in so far be said to have worked all his life
with the same conviction, that he has never ceased asserting
and endeavouring to secure the independence of Norway in its
Union with the larger neighbour country. In every part of Europe,
except Scandinavia, Norway is looked on as a country ruled by
the "King of Sweden." Even those who have retained from
their school-days a certain Impression of Norway being itself a
kingdom, involuntarily think of the country as a province of
Sweden ; and every time that a misunderstanding occurs between
the King and the Government on one side and the Norwegian
Parliament on the other, we see Norway mentioned in the Euro-
pean newspapers as a sort of rebellious Ireland. This circumstance
is a natural result of the fact that the King resides in Stockholm,
and that the foreign policy of the kingdom is directed by a
Swedish minister ; but it shows how necessary it is that Norway
should be on its guard against any further attempts to place it in
a subordinate position as regards either Sweden or the ruler of
the united kingdom.

It is well known that ever since 1814 the house of Bernadotte
has from time to time endeavoured to bring about the amalgamation
of Norway with the neighbouring kingdom, and to restrict the con-
stitutional Privileges of the Norwegian people; and the Norwegians
on their side have been prompt to espy a new danger in every
attempt made to knit the countries together in closer political union.
As early as 1858, Björnson, as the young editor of the Bergens-
Posten newspaper, opposed such an attempt, and it was partly due
to his action that the members of Parliament for Bergen who had
voted for a closer Customs Union (Zollverein) between Sweden änd
Norway were not re-elected. In 1859, as editor of the Christiania
newspaper, Aftenbladety he vigorously defended the right of
Norway to resist the appointment of a Swedish Statholder. In
1866-67, as editor of the Norsk Folkeblad^ he was one of the

z66

BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON 167

strongest opponents of the so-calied " Union Bill," the object of
which was to unite the two kingdoms more closely. Ever since
the dispute broke out between King Oscar and the Norwegian
Parliament on the subject of the Hing's ''absolute veto," and
more especially since a visit to America in 1858 gave him the .
opportunity of studying American populär eloquence, Björnson
has been one of the most influential political leaders in Norway.
He is also probably the greatest populär orator of Scandinavia. 1/
It deserves to be noted and remembered that never, during htS^
struggle for the independence of Norway, has he allowed himself
to be proyoked into saying a thoughtless or slighting word of
Sweden; he has always declared his warm aifection for that
country.

No notice of Björnstjerne Björnson is complete unless it deals
with him as Journalist and public Speaker; but to do this it
would be necessary to have at band a complete coUection of his
newspaper articles and important speeches. All the different
stages of development he has passed through could be studied
even better in them than in his literary works, and for this
reason it is desirable that such a collection should be published
during his lifetime. Much immature and foolish writing would
probably see the light, but also enough of what is admirable
and instructive to fiU many volumes. Few wield a polemic
pen like Björnson, and few have his gift of writing popularly
without writing diffusely.

But it is as an orator that Björnson shows himself to us most^
unreservedly and entirely. In this capacity he is a great, genial
agitator. When I try to picture him to myself in the Situation
which suits his inmost natura best, I see him Standing on the
platform at a public meeting, tall and broad-shouldered, towering
above thousands of Norwegian peasants, swaying the silent
multitude around him by the mighty tones of his voice and his \
irresistible devotion to the truth, greeted by a storm of jubilant \

homage the moment his voice ceases. ^ 3

V. The Norwegian and Danish nations, who for so many hundred
years were politically united, who build intellectually on the foun-
dation of the same old literature, who to this day have one and
the same written language and form one reading public, are also
one in their attitude towards the great intellectual questions of
the day. The modern Norwegian and Danish literatures, written

i68 BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON

in the same language with immaterial differences of dialecti are,
under two names, in reality only one literature. The same desire
for the spread of füll, free, modern enlightenment which inspires
Bjömson in Norway, inspires the younger generation in Denmark.
Each from his own side, we are working at the cultivation of the
one literary field.

Who knows ! Perhaps the same thing may happen that hap-
pened with the covering of the bare hillside in Arne: when,
after many fruitless endeavours, the day comes at last on which
the heather gets one eye, and the birch its whole head, up over
the top of the rocks, they discover, with many a " Well, now, who
would have thought it?" of glad surprise, that there is on the
other side of the high plateau a whole wood — fir and heather and
juniper and birch — Standing waiting. They are met by the work
that has been done from the other side.

"Yes, this is what they call success," said the juniper.

INDEX

(HENRIK IBSEN)

Aladdin, 15

Author*s MSS.» loss and destraction of,
108

Bergen, 5, 86, 88, 91, 94

Bjömson, 7, 8, 43, 48, 66, 68, 74, 79,
81, 82, 8;

Brand, 3, 9, ii, 19, 20, 21, 22, 22-26,
27. 29, J2, 43, 44, 49, 57, 60, 62, 64,
69, 70, 80, 97, 99, 102, 116, 122

Brandes, Dr., 23

Bredahl, C. H., 63

Carducci, Signor, 68

CaHlina, 5, 9, 10, 28, 47, 48, 50-51, 74,

92, 105, 118
CHiristiania, 5, 9, 86, 94
Collett, Fru, The Sherifs Daughter,

74-75
Commune, The Paris, 59, 60

Complicaäons, 52

Copenhagen, 98

Corpse in the Cargo, A, 44

Critic, A, 118

. Dbnmark, 5, 56, 94, 98
\_poirs House, ^, 44, 51, 76, 77, 78, 80,
106, 114
Dust, Björnson's, 81

Emperor and Gaiileany 53, 7I) 97

Feast at Solhaug, The, 9, 10, 48, 50, 74,

88, 89, 92-93, 105
Flaubert, Mons., 49, 68
France of 1870, 55

Ghosts, 'j'j, 78, 79, 80, 81, 98, 99, 114,

116
Goethe, 47, 52, 58, 76
GonCj 46
Greatness, 14
Gyllembouxg, Fru, 7

Hebbel, Friedrich, 81
Hedda Gabler, 87, 93, 103-108
Heiberg, J. L., 7, 15, 20, 22, 50, 6&^,

89
Heine, H., 66

Hero's Grave, The, 48, 86-88, 91
Hertz, Henrik, 10, 48, 49, 50, 88, 89
Holberg, 27, 88
Home happiness, 11 o
Home Life, 44
Hugo, Victor, 68

Ibsen,. Henrik, birth, 5; early years,
li^., 41, 42 ; editor, stage manager, 5 ;
father's position, 41 ; marries M. Thore-
sen, 6 ; goes to Rome, ib, ; lyric poems
and dramas, ib, ; annuity from Nor-
wegian Storihing, ib, ; a polemist, 3-4,
8, II, 37, 47, 102 ; his one thoroughly
successful drama, 8, 19 ; character con-

trasts, JP- J2f '. s^^^^S^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^
ideal, \\, 2Trin relation to Kierke-
gaard, 21 ; flowing diction, 23 ; first
issues of his productions, 42 ; cause of
leaving Norway, 42-43 ; returns from
voluntary exile, 122 ; former cosmo-
politan life, 43 ; giim exponent, 44, 46 ;
longing for the ideal, ^5 ; personal
appearance, 46 ; bust by Kuneberg, ib, ;

facial expression, 47 ; view of mankind,

joj pgsamism, 53; personality in
accordwith writings, 55-65 ; Danish
sympathies, 56; distrust of parliaments,
57 ; political ideal, 59 ; views on friend-
ship, 61 ; treatment of the relations
between woman and man, 74 J faith in
woman, J[6.; first fascinauns; female
character, 95 ; Spiritual developqient,
78-79; his method of production for
press, 80-81 ; proof of fame, 85 ; dis-
dple of Oehlenschlä^er, 86; and of
Hertz, 89; early k>llowed Danish
poetrv, 89 ; ingenious mystifier, 95 ;
belief in Divine call to his vocation,
97 ; fierce Scandinavian attack on
Ghosts, 98, loi ; enundation of aristo-
cratic principles, 99 ; accused of radi-
calism, loi ; in Norway, ib, ; speecM--^
-to Workmen's Union, ib. ; a very grea^
poet, 107 ; contrasts in his nature, 114;
emblematic tendency, ib, ; early en-
grossed by the relations between parents
and ofl&pring, 120; admired and ido-
lised by his countrymen, 122

X69

17©

INDEX

InseparabUsj The, 26-27
Intelligence, 47

{iCGER's Ibsen, 6
aeger's, Hans, Christiania'ßohemiaf 106
Jcws, thc, 59
John Gabriel Borkman^ 11^122

Kierkegaard, Sören, 21, 35, 48, 49,
58, 61, 62, 64, 69, 70, 71, 99

Lady front the Sea, The, 102-103, io6>

112
Lady Inger of Östraat, 9, 11, 30, 31, 74,

94-97, 118
Landstad's collection, 92
'* Law of change," 115
League of Youth, The, 58, 71» 73. 76, 81,

100
Leopardi, Italian poet, 68
Lessing, 56
Letters from Hell^ 20
Liberty, 59
Life depicted, 4
Liieraiure of the Nineteenth Century,

Brandes' Main Currents in the, 70
Uttle Eyolf 115, 120, 122
Love as treated by Ibsen, 30-33
Ijov^s Comedy, 3, 8, 10, 20, 21-23, 26,

42, 74, 75, 91
Ludwig, Otto, 81

Majority, Ibsen's view, 99

Mankind, 49

Master- Builder, The, 97, 103, 109-114,

116, 122
Mill, John Stuart, 76

" NOBILITY " of national life, loi
Norway, loi, 122
Norwegian people, 50

poetry, 7, 1 1, 28

Society, 52, 104

OehlenschlÄger, 13, 14, 15, 22, 44,

48, 86, 87, 88, 96
Olaf Liliekr ans, 88, 91, 92, 93
On the Uplands, 44

Paludan-Müllbr's poems, 7, 11, 18,

22, 35. 76
Peer Cynt, 34-37, 41, 44, 50, 62, 67, 76

80, 90, 97» 102
People, An Enemy of the, 97, 98, 99,

100
Pessimism, 51
Philosophv, 36, 37
PiUars 0/ Society, The, 53, 69, 74, 81,

100, 118, 120
Poet, aspects of a, 8, 36, 37, 66, 107
Poetic art, 21-22
Poetry, true, 21

Poetry, Modern Danish-Nocwegism, 88
PoTerty, effects of early, 41
Pretenders, The, 13, 15, 16, 18, 20, 28,

29, 30. 3I1 43. 58, 67, 71-73. 76, 97

Rhymed Letter to a Swedish Lady, 45

Right, 15

Rome, 57

Rosmersholm, 97, loo, 101-102

Russian oppression, 56

ScANDiNAViAN literature, 122

unity, 58

Schack's Visionaries, 35

Schiller, 4, 44, 47, 58, 73, 99

Self-mistrust, 16

Self-reliance, 16

Society, see Pillßrs of

Sigurd Jorsalfar, Bjömson's, 82

Subjects and Ideals of the eye, 67-68

Svend Dyrin^s House, Hertz's, 88, 89

Sweden, 104, 122

Swinburne, A., 68

Taine, M., 36
Terje Vigen, 47
Thoresen, Magdalene, 6, 7
Thoresen, Fru, 69
Thorvaldsen, iio
Turgueneff, 57, 73

ViHngs at Helgüand, The, 9, 10, 12, 19
48, 50, 92, 105

Wild Duck, The, 99, ico, Ii6, Il8
Will, ideasof, 11

INDEX

(BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON)

ÄNDRiC; 133

Ame^ Bjömson's, 127, 137, 140, 144, 168
Amljot Gelline^ 141, 153, 159
Arnljofs Longingfor the Sea, 143
Asbjömsen, .135

Auerbach's Schwarzwalder Dorfgeschich-
ten, 138

works, 138, 139

Author's difficulties, 131, 133

Bankruptcyy Björnson's, 158, 161

Bergen, 144

Bergliot, Bjömson's, 1 50-1 51

Between the Battles, 136, 141

Bjömson, Björnstjeme, birth and parent-
age, 134; boyhood and education, 135 ;
theideaof bis life, 127-128, 141 ; pby-
sique, 129; personal ap^arance, 129;
habits, 131 ; early criticised, 129-130,
137 ; public utterances, 131, 167 ; and
fellow-Norwegians, 13T, 132; patriot-
ism, 132, 133 ; home at Gausdal, 132 ;
supplies the national demand, 133 ; in
Sweden and Denmark, 136; develop-
ment, 136-137 ; peasant stories, 138-
139 ; contrast to Ibsen, 142, 165 ;
theatrical manager, 144 ; dramas, 144-
148 ; balladsand songs, 149-15 1 ; first
period, 152 ; later awakening, 156-
157, 160; second period, 164; advo-
cate of Norwegian mdependence, 166 ;
polidcal leader, 167 ; and Journalist,
167-168

Blicher, Steen Steensen, 138

Bull, Ole, 144

Byron, Lord, 131, 163

Christiania, 135, 144, 166
Copenhagen, 136, 138

Darwin, Charles, 154, 156
Denmark, 137, 138, 154, 156, 168
DolTs House, Ibsen's, 131, 165

Editor, The, Bjömson's, 158, 161

Georgs Sand, 138, 163
Ghosts, Ibsen's, 131, 165
Goethe's Erlkönig, 149
Grundtvig, 132, 135, 155, 156, 159

Happy Boyi A, Bjömson, 140
Heiberg, J. L., 135, 136, 154

Heine, H., 129, 131
Hertz, Henrik, 137, 151
Hugo» Victor, 131, 154

Ibsen, Henrik, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133,

142, 164, 165
Immermann*s Der Oberhof, 138

Keats, 129

Kierkegaard, 133, 146, 147, 155

King, A, 161-162

Kvikne, in Dovrefjeld, 134

Landstad, 135

League of Youth, 164

Leonarda, Bjömson's, 160^ 162^ 163

MagnhUd, Bjömson's, 162
Maria Stuart, 144-146, 153
Married, 136, 146-148, 163
Max Müller, Prof., 156
Michael Angelo, 132, 142
Mill, John Stuart, 154, 156

'NiGS in the Romsdal, 134
Nils Finn^ Bjömson's, 149-150
Norway, 127, 132, 137, 141, 154, 156,

166, 168
Norwegian poets of eighteenth Century,

131

Student 5 Credit^ to Wethauen, 150

Novel, the peasant, 138

Obhlenschläger school, 136, 137, 149,
159

Romsdal Valley, 135

Scan DI NÄVI ans, 154-155
Schiller, 129, 131

Shunner ofthe Daylight, Ibsen's, 130
Shyness, 130
Sibbera, 135

Sigurd Slembe, 141, 152, 153
Sigurd's Flight, 130
Spinoza, 139

Swinburae's Chastelard, 145
Synhöve Solbakken, Bjömson's, 130, 136,
140, 159

turgubneff, i32, 164

Wbrgeland, Henrik, 127, 131, 133,
135» ISO» 164

X7X

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Books

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "Henrik Ibsen: Critical Studies."

See other formats