Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century

Although conditions of this kind signify less in so poor and so democratic a country as Norway than elsewhere, and although Ibsen has lacked neither the faculty of youth, nor that of the poet, to rise superior to actual adversity through enthusiasm for ideas and an independent dream-life, still, early poverty always leaves its marks on the character. It may breed humility; it may develop opposition; it may render the nature wavering, or independent, or hard throughout life. To Ibsen's reserved, combative, and satirical temperament, which was far more gifted to occupy the curiosity of the surroundings than to win their hearts, it must have served as a challenge. It has probably imparted to him a certain insecurity regarding his social status, a certain ambition in the direction of those external distinctions that were calculated to place him on an equal footing with the class from which in youth he had been cut off, and a powerful sense of being compelled to depend on himself and his own resources alone.

A nine weeks' activity as publisher of a weekly newspaper without many subscribers was followed, 1851-57, by a period of labor as stage-manager of the small theatre in Bergen, and after the last-named year as director of the Christiania Theatre, which in 1862 went into bankruptcy. Ibsen, who, as years have gone on, has become so staid and sedate, and whose days pass with the regularity of clock-work, is said to have lived a rather irregular life as a young man, and was pursued, therefore, by that evil report which even some trifling aberration, especially when caused by the erratic tendency of genius, will call forth in a small place where all eyes keep watch on each and every one. I can well imagine Ibsen just entering on manhood, tormented by creditors, and daily executed in effigy by the followers of the coffee-party ethics of female gossips. He had written fine poems in no insignificant number, as well as a series of dramas which are now celebrated, and some of which belong to his most admired productions, but which were published in Norway in unsightly editions on wretched paper, had a sale of only a few hundred copies, and yielded the author, even on the part of his friends, but a moderately cool recognition of talent, together with the morally crushing sentence that he "lacked ideal faith and conviction." He became disgusted with Norway. In 1862, fully equipped with the weapons of polemics and satire, he had published "Kjærlighedens Komedie" (Love's Comedy), a drama which unites cutting scorn at the erotic affairs of conventional society, with deep distrust in the power of love to endure through all the vicissitudes of life, and profound doubt of its ability to preserve its ideal and ardent nature unscathed and unchanged in marriage. It could not have been unknown to the poet that society, with all the tenacity of the instinct of self-preservation, has made it a duty to have confidence in the immutability of normal love between man and woman; but he was young enough, and defiant enough, to justify relatively the most trivial conceptions of matrimony, as exemplified in the union of Guldstad and Svanhild, rather than withhold his doubts concerning the existing dogmatics of love. The book raised a howl of exasperation. People were indignant at this attack on the amatory relations of society, betrothals, marriages, etc. Instead of taking home to themselves his fierce thrusts, they began, as is quite customary in such cases, to pry into Ibsen's own private life, to investigate the circumstances of his marriage, and, as Ibsen once remarked to me, "Though the published criticisms of the comedy might have been endured, the verbal and private censure was altogether insufferable." Henrik Ibsen was condemned as a talented mauvais sujet. Even so superb a work as "Kongs-Emneme" (The Pretenders), which followed in 1864, did not suffice to purify and exalt the poet's name. As far as I am aware, this drama was not actually condemned by the critics, but it was by no means estimated according to its merits, and it created no sensation whatever. I do not think twenty copies reached Denmark. At all events, it was "Brand" that first made the poet's name known beyond Norway. An essay, in which the works of Ibsen were reviewed by me in 1867, and which called attention to their rare worth, was the first presentation of his life as an author given to the public.65 To Henrik Ibsen's private reasons for melancholy was added a sense of profound dissatisfaction with Norway's political attitude during the Danish-German war. When Norway and Sweden, in 1864, failed to stand by Denmark against Prussia and Austria, notwithstanding all the promises given at students' meetings, as well as by a press ostensibly devoted to Scandinavian interests, and which were understood by Ibsen to be binding, or at least considered obligatory, home became so odious to him, as the seat of shallowness, laxity, and pusillanimity, that he turned his back upon it.

Since that time he has dwelt alternately in Italy, in Dresden, in Munich, and again in Italy, in each of the German cities five or six years at a time. But a permanent abiding-place he has not had. He has led a quiet, orderly family-life, or more accurately speaking, he has, within the framework of family-life, had his real life in his work. He has had intercourse in public places with the most eminent men of foreign cities; has received into his house a multitude of Scandinavians who happened to be passing through the town where he was staying; but he has lived as in a tent, amidst hired furniture which could be returned to its owners any day his departure was fixed upon; for seventeen years he has not set foot beneath his own table, or reposed in his own bed. He has never settled anywhere in the stricter sense of the term; he has accustomed himself to feel at home in homelessness. When last I visited him he replied to my question, if nothing in the suite of rooms he occupied belonged to him, by pointing to a row of paintings on the walls; that was all he could there call his own. Even now, as a man of means, he feels no desire to own his own house and home, to say nothing of farming lands and buildings, the pride of Björnson. He is separated from his people, without any activity that binds him to an institution, or a party, or even so much as to a magazine, or to a newspaper at home or abroad – a solitary man. And in his isolation he writes: —

"My people, who to me from goblet foamingA wholesome, bitter draught of strength once gave,That roused the poet, ling'ring near his grave,To arm himself and labor through the gloaming —My people, who on me the exile's stave,With sorrow's scrip and sandals swift for roaming,Bestowed, the outfit stern for strife completing —From distant realms I send thee home my greeting!"

Many and important indeed are the greetings he has sent home; but over all his productions, both before and during his exile, there lingers one and the same prevailing mood, that of his temperament, a mood whose main characteristics are freedom from restraint and cheerless despondency. This fundamental tone, so natural to the homeless, permeates everything with which he creates the strongest impression. Recall some of his most characteristic, moreover some of his most diametrically opposed works, as for instance, the poem "Paa Viddeme" (On the Mountain Plains), in which the narrator, from the lofty mountain heights, sees the cottage of his mother surrounded by lurid flames and his mother burned alive, while he himself, wholly deprived of willpower and in a state of utter despair, stands watching the effective illumination, or "Fra Mit Husliv" (From My Household Life), in which the creations of the poet's fancy, his winged offspring, take flight as soon as he sees himself in the glass with his leaden eyes, closely-buttoned vest, and felt shoes; think of the thrilling poetry of that dismal scene where Brand wrests from his wife their dead child's clothing; call to mind the scene where Brand consigns his mother to hell, and that superbly original scene in which Peer Gynt paves the way to heaven for his mother with lies; conjure up "Liget i Lasten" (The Corpse in the Cargo), or the overwhelmingly painful impression aroused by Nora (A Model Home), – that butterfly, which is pricked with a needle through three acts, only to be pierced at last, – and it will be felt that the prevailing atmosphere, corresponding to the landscape background of a painter, in all pathetic parts is fierce, cheerless gloom. It may rise to a pitch of tragical awe, but that is no proof that its author is simply a writer of tragedy. Schiller's tragedies, as well as those of Oehlenschläger, are gloomy only in occasional situations, and even the author of "King Lear" and of "Macbeth" has produced such harmoniously moulded creations as "The Tempest" or, "A Midsummer Night's Dream." With Ibsen, however, this tone is the fundamental one. It could not be otherwise in the case of a born idealist who, from the outset of his career, thirsted for beauty in its highest forms, as purely ideal, spiritual beauty; or, in the case of a born rigorist who, thoroughly Germanic, especially Norse, by character and temperament, influenced, moreover, by circumstances to Christian views, was inclined to esteem the life of the senses repellent or sinful, and not to admire seriously, or even to recognize other than moral beauty. In his innermost soul he was shy; that is to say, but few disappointments were required to make him withdraw into himself, even with distrust of the surrounding world in his heart. How early must he not have been wounded, repulsed, humiliated, as it were, in his original proneness to believe and to admire! His first deep impression as an intellectual being must have been, I think, an impression of the rarity – non-existence, he may have added in moments of bitterness – of moral worth, and disappointed in his quest for beauty, he found a certain relief in unveiling the sorrowful truth that lay concealed behind the glamour of appearances. The atmosphere about him reverberated with words denoting ideals and telling of eternal love, of profound seriousness, of fidelity, of decision of character, of Norse patriotic sentiment (the national sentiment of "det lille, men klippefaste Klippefolk": the little, yet cliff-like, steadfast mountain-folk); he looked about him, he searched eagerly, but found nothing in the world of reality corresponding to these words. Thus there was developed in him, through his very yearning for an ideal, a peculiar faculty for discovering everything to be spurious. It became an instinct with him to apply a crucial test to whatever seemed genuine, and to feel little if any astonishment when he proved it to be false. It became a passion with him to rap with his fingers on all that seemed like solid metal, and it gave him a sense of painful satisfaction to hear the ring of hollowness, which at the same time offended his ear and corroborated his foreboding. Whenever he came into contact with what was supposed to be great, it became both a habit and a necessity with him, to ask as in "Rimbrevet til en Svensk Dame" (Letter in Rhyme to a Swedish Lady): "Is it truly great, this greatness?" He became keenly alive to all the egotism, all the untruthfulness, inherent in imaginative life, to all the wretched bungling the phrases of freedom and progress may conceal, and gradually a stupendous ideal or moral distrust became his muse. It inspired him to ever more and more daring investigations. Nothing overawed, nothing startled him, either what appeared like idyllic happiness in domestic life, or what resembled dogmatic security in social life. The more audacious his investigations, the greater became his dauntless courage in communicating, disseminating, proclaiming the result. It came to be his chief intellectual delight to disturb the equanimity, to arouse the ire of all those whose interest it was to conceal with euphemisms existing evils. Just as it had always seemed to him that too much was said about ideals that were never realized in actual life, so too he felt, with ever increasing certainty and wrathful indignation, that people, as it were by common consent, maintained silence in regard to the deepest, most irretrievable breach with ideals, in regard to the true, unmistakable causes of horror and dismay. In polite society they were avoided as improbable, or unsuitable to be mentioned; in poetry, as appalling and gloomy; for æsthetics had once for all banished from belles-lettres all that was unduly harsh, painful, or irreconcilable. Thus it was, as nearly as can be defined, that Ibsen became the poet of haunting gloom, and thence comes his inherent tendency to justify, in sharp and bitter expressions, his attitude toward the majority.

Henrik Ibsen's personal appearance is suggestive of the qualities manifested in his poetry. In his countenance the reflection of a soul full of tenderness, even though disguised by the stem or sarcastic earnestness of the physiognomy, will occasionally make itself apparent. Ibsen is below the medium height, is heavily built, dresses with a certain style and elegance, and has altogether a very distinguished appearance. His gait is slow, his bearing dignified, his carriage worthy. His head is large, interesting, framed with a wealth of grizzled hair, which he wears pretty long. The forehead, which is the dominating feature of the face, is unusual in form, is high, almost perpendicular, broad, and at the same time well modelled, and bears the impress of greatness and marked intellectual vigor. The mouth, when in repose, is so tightly compressed that there is scarcely any trace of lips; its closeness and firmness betray the fact that Ibsen is a man of few words. In truth, it is his wont, when in the society of a large number of people, to remain as taciturn as though he were the mute, and at times almost crabbed guardian of the sanctuary of his mind. He can talk when in the society of one person alone, or in a very small circle, but even then he is far from communicative. A Frenchman, whom I once took in Rome to see Runeberg's bust of the poet, said, "The expression is more spirituelle than poetic." It is very apparent to the observer that Ibsen is a satiric poet, a brooding thinker, but not a visionary. His most exquisite poems, however, such as "Borte" (Absent) and some others, indicate plainly that at some time in the battle of life a lyric Pegasus has been slain under him.

I am familiar with two expressions in his face. The first is the one in which his smile, – his kind, delicate smile, penetrates and animates the mask of his countenance, in which all that is cordial and heartfelt, all that lies deepest in his soul, rises uppermost. Ibsen has a certain tendency to embarrassment, as is apt to be the case with melancholy, serious natures. He has, however, a most charming smile, and through smile, look, and pressure of the hand, he expresses much which he neither could, nor would, clothe in words. And he has a habit, when engaged in conversation, of smiling playfully, with a twinkle of good-natured raillery, as he tosses off some brief, not-at-all-good-natured remark, in which the lovable side of his character is plainly manifested. The smile softens the sharpness of the outburst.

But I am also familiar with another expression in his countenance, one in which impatience, anger, righteous indignation, cutting scorn, impart to it a look of almost cruel austerity, forcibly reminding the observer of the words in his beautiful old poem Terje Vigen: —

"Yet, sometimes, in stormy weather, a kindOf madness would kindle his eye; —And few there were then who could courage findTo come Terje Vigen nigh."

This is the expression his poetic soul has most frequently assumed before the world.

Ibsen is by nature a polemic, and his first poetic outburst (Catiline) was at the same time his first declaration of war. From the moment he arrived at years of maturity – which, by the way, was not very early – he has never actually doubted that he, the individual, on one scale, and on the other what is called society – in Ibsen's eyes the embodiment of those who shun the truth, and who are ever on the alert to conceal evils with empty phrases – would balance evenly. He is in the habit of asserting, among many whimsical paradoxes, that in every age there is a certain sum of intelligence for distribution; in the event of some individuals being especially well equipped, – as, for instance, Goethe and Schiller in their day in Germany, – their contemporaries will be all the more stupid in proportion. Ibsen, I may safely assert, is inclined to believe that he has received his endowments at a time when there were very few with whom to divide the sum.

He has, therefore, no consciousness of being the child of a people, a part of the whole, the leader of a group, a member of society; he feels himself exclusively a gifted individual, and the sole object in which he believes, and for which he cherishes respect is personality. In this emancipation from all natural relations, in this exaltation of the ego as an intellectual force, there is a lively reminder of that period in Northern history, in which Ibsen received his culture. Above all else, the influence of Kierkegaard66 is apparent. Ibsen's isolation, however, has a totally different stamp, upon whose moulding Björnson's quite opposite personality has had no trifling influence. It is always of vast significance to an individual to be historically so situated that destiny places at its side a contrasting companion-piece. Not infrequently it is a misfortune for a noted man to see his name continually coupled with another, it may be for glorification, it may be for censure, but always by way of comparison. The compulsory twin relation that cannot be shaken off may irritate and harm. In the case of Ibsen, it has, perhaps, aided in forcing the peculiarities of his nature to their utmost extremities; in other words, it has intensified his fervor and reserve. No one who, like Ibsen, believes in the rights and capabilities of the emancipated individual, no one who, as early in life as he, has placed himself on a war footing with his surroundings, holds a very flattering opinion of the masses. There evidently developed within him, on the very threshold of manhood, a contempt for his fellow-creatures. It was not because he had from the first an exaggerated opinion of his own talents, or his own worth. His is a brooding, doubting, questioning nature. He says himself: —

"My calling is to question, not to answer," and minds like his have no tendency to conceit. It may be noted, too, how long he was in finding the right language and form with which to clothe his thought; how crude his first effort "Catiline" was; how strong the evidence displayed in his unpublished drama "Kjæmpehöjen" (The Barrow), of the influence of Oehlenschläger, especially of "Landet fundet og forsvundet" (The land that was found, and that disappeared); how constantly the reader is reminded, even to the very metre, in the drama "Gildet paa Solhaug" (The Banquet at Solhaug) of a totally dissimilar genius Henrik Hertz, especially of the latter's drama, "Svend Dyring's House," and how, in his "Hærmændene paa Helgeland" (The Warriors of Helgeland), he availed himself of the effective features of saga literature on a large scale, before he presumed to take satisfaction in his own resources, and his own markedly individual style.67 At the outset of his career he belonged rather to those natures that enter upon life with profound reverence, prepared to recognize the superiority of others, until adversity gives them a consciousness of their own power. From the moment the discovery is made, however, such natures become, as a rule, far more rigid and stubborn than those that were originally self-complacent. They accustom themselves to weigh those whose superiority formerly they would have accepted as a matter of course, with the eye as on an invisible scale, and cast them aside the moment they fall below the standard weight.

Ibsen finds the average mortal petty, egotistic, worthless. His mode of apprehension is not the purely scientific one of the observer; it is that of the moralist; and in his quality of moralist he dwells far more on the wickedness of humanity, than on its blindness and lack of discretion. To Flaubert mankind is wicked because it is stupid; to Ibsen, on the contrary, it is stupid because it is wicked. Recall, for instance, the case of Thorvald Helmer. Throughout the entire drama in which he plays so sorrowful a rôle, he views his wife with eyes of utter stupidity, – the hopeless stupidity of a blockhead. In the place where Nora bids Dr. Rank the last farewell, where thoughts of suicide are brought face to face with thoughts of death, and the doctor's reply is couched in terms of sympathizing tenderness, Helmer stands, drunk and lascivious, his arms outstretched. Yet he is thus stupid solely on account of his self-righteous egotism.

And simply wrong-doers Ibsen finds mankind, not vicious by nature. On a previous occasion I quoted an aphorism from Kierkegaard's "Enten – Eller" (Either – Or), which seems peculiarly well adapted to be a motto for Ibsen: "Let others lament that the times are evil. I lament that they are paltry and contemptible, for they are utterly without passion. The thoughts of mankind are as thin and as feeble as lace-women. The thoughts of their hearts are too insignificant to be sinful." What else does Brand say when he bewails the God of his generation and hold up in contrast his own God, his own ideal, as follows: —

"And like the race, its God is hoary,His silv'ry hair its pride and glory.But this thy God cannot be mine,For mine is storm, while wind is thine.* * * * * * * * *And mine like Hercules is young,No aged sire as thou hast sung."

What else says the "Knappestöber" (The Button-moulder)? He answers Peer Gynt about as Mephistopheles, in Heiberg's "En Sjæl efter Döden" (A Soul After Death), replied to the "soul." Peer Gynt is not destined to be plunged into the brimstone pit; he is merely to be returned to the casting-ladle, that he may be moulded over again. He was no sinner, for, as the text declares, "der skal Kraft og Alvor til en Synd" (it requires power and earnestness to commit a sin), he belonged to the mediocre classes, and therefore, he "must be cast into the waste-box to be moulded over again."

According to Ibsen's conception, Peer Gynt is the typical expression of the national vices of the Norwegian people. It is very evident the poet was inspired with less horror than contempt by these vices.

This view of the matter explains even those of Ibsen's youthful works, in which his characteristics as an author are yet undeveloped. Margit, in "The Banquet at Solhaug," for instance, cannot help reminding the reader of the Ragnhild of Hertz. Yet the figure is moulded of quite different metal from that of Hertz; it is harder, less pliable, more tenacious. A woman of to-day, whose heart was filled with despairing love, would feel more akin to Ragnhild than to Margit; for Margit stands as a token to such a woman that she, the reader, is the child of an enfeebled age, devoid of either the courage or the consequence of passion, lost in half-measures. And wherefore does Ibsen, in his "Warriors of Helgeland," reach back to the wild tragedy, the magnificent horror, of the "Volsunga Saga"? In order that he may present this picture of the past to the contemplation of the present, in order to awe, in order to reproach the generation of to-day, by showing it the grandeur of its forefathers, – that passionate intensity which once unbridled, rushed madly onward toward its goal, looking neither to the right nor to the left, regardless of all minor considerations; that pride and strength which is chary of words, which silently acts, silently suffers, silently dies; those wills of iron; those hearts of gold; those deeds which a thousand years have not buried in oblivion. Aye, behold yourselves in the mirror!

Take this combative pathos in its first outburst, – it is his "Catiline" conceived with the entire sympathy of an enthusiastic university student. Catiline despises and hates the Roman social life, in which violence and selfishness hold sway; where men become rulers through intrigue and strategy; and he, the single individual, rebels against society. Take this combative pathos in one of Ibsen's later works, in the most admirable of his dramas, "Et Dukkehjem" (A Model Home), where it rings with a subdued, but none the less penetrating tone from female lips. Where Nora, the singing-bird, the squirrel, the child, finally collects herself and says, "I must try to find out which is right: society, or myself"; where this frail creature dares place herself on one side and all society on the other, we feel plainly that she is a true daughter of Ibsen. Take, finally, the pathos, so filled with thirst for battle, in a later work, "Gjengangere" (Apparitions), in Mrs. Alving's words concerning the teachings of modern official society, as follows: "I only intended to meddle with a single knot, but when that was untied, everything fell to pieces. And then I became aware that I was handling machine sewing." In these words, remote though the poet may be from the heroine of the play, may be heard a sigh of relief, that for once, if only indirectly, utterance has been given to the utmost that could be said.