Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century

In the dramas of Schiller, as well as in those of modern Germany, the struggle for political and spiritual freedom plays a prominent rôle. Class distinctions, too, are a favorite theme in various German dramas of an earlier period, even though it had not then become customary for poetry to deal with what is called at the present time the social problem. A glimmer of the latter appeared much earlier in the French drama, from the days of Beaumarchais to those of Victor Hugo, as this question had become a burning one in public discussion in France far earlier than elsewhere. In the polite literature of our day, the social question has gradually banished the political from its high seat. Modern poetry, in many lands, is inspired by sympathy with the poor and lowly; it reminds those who are well placed in life of their duties. The question is not one of those that have chiefly occupied Ibsen, and yet he has touched upon it. When he wrote "Catiline," he was too undeveloped to comprehend the social problem aright; but many years later, in "Samfundets Stötter" (The Pillars of Society), he aimed a blow at the leading circles of his fatherland. The play is wholly without a socialistic tendency, as is well known, yet so profound is its pessimism that those who are unfamiliar with Norwegian affairs, especially with the attitude of the poet to his public and to the various parties of his native land, might take it for granted that there was a tendency of the kind in the work. When it was played in Berlin, many spectators (and, it may safely be asserted, not those who were by any means lacking in judgment) yielded to the error that it was written by a socialist. I was myself obliged to assure many people that its author was, on the contrary, the favorite poet (at that time) of the conservative party in Norway. In "The Pillars of Society," which has the effect of a supplement to "The Young Men's Union," the two sides of the question are as little apparent as in the last-named comedy. Ibsen proceeds here, as everywhere else, from a one-sided point of view.

The relation between man and woman is one of those that has most intensely absorbed Ibsen, and in regard to which he has cherished the most original and the most modern sentiments.

In his first youthful works this relation is treated somewhat in the traditional way. He attacks in his "Gildet paa Solhaug" (Banquet at Solhaug) the same theme Björnson has chosen for his "Halte Hulda" (Lame Hulda); that is, the position of a young man between the woman a little older than himself whom he has loved in his youth, and the young girl whom he longs with his whole heart to make his bride, – a theme both human and universal, yet one that has frequently been varied. He next represents, in his "Catiline" and in his "Fru Inger til Österaat" (Mistress Inger at Österaat) the same rather forced yet stirring motive, how a man who had led a licentious life in his youth is punished through his love for a young girl who at the same time loves, abhors, and curses him, because he had betrayed her sister and sent her to her grave.

In his "Kjærlighedens Komedie" (Love's Comedy), Ibsen for the first time takes up the erotic condition of his fatherland for his theme. He had apparently received no trifling stimulus from contemporary Norwegian literature. While Björnson during his first period was influenced by popular tradition and popular poetry, Ibsen was incited to action in his early days by the most advanced thinkers of the time. There is something in the inspiration of "Love's Comedy" that may be traced back to Camilla Collet's "Amtmandens Dötre" (The Magistrate's Daughters). The latter daring book at that time occupied every Norwegian mind; and it contained the same witty, though rather less well planned attack on betrothals and marriages that in Ibsen's drama is conducted by a firm, manly hand. So far as similes and figures are concerned, the influence of Camilla Collet is very perceptible. Ibsen's celebrated "tea-comparison" is derived from her. In "The Magistrate's Daughters" we read of love, as follows: —

"Guard, O mankind, this our life's first bloom… Heed its growth and its fruit… Do not lightly disturb its tender, budding leaf, in the belief that the coarse blossoms that come later are good enough… No; they are not good enough. There is as great a difference between the two kinds, as there is between the tea we ordinary mortals must be content with, and that which the emperor of the Celestial Kingdom drinks, and which is the only genuine tea; it is gathered first, and is so delicate and tender that it must be plucked with gloves, after the gleaners have washed twenty-four times."

Henrik Ibsen writes: —

"Ah, ladies, in your hearts, you one and allA special small Celestial Empire hold,Where many precious budding germs unfoldBehind your maidenhood's crumbling Chinese wall."

And the passage ends thus: —

"Behold, to us a second growth there faresThat with the first like hemp with silk compares;And stalks and rubbish 'midst the leaves we see;This is the blackened tea —It fills the market."

Ibsen has simply given further development to the simile and invested it with the solid mould of verse.

It is a well-known fact, that there is nothing clear in "Love's Comedy" except its mockery. The play presents a satire on marriage which imparts to the reader as little sympathy for the defenders of the conventional standard, as for its assailers, and from which it is impossible to detect whether in the poet's opinion it is better to maintain the present practices of society or to overthrow them. The only thing that is certain is his misanthropic view of the betrothals and marriages that have come under his observation. I remember a conversation with Ibsen in reference to this drama, which revolved about the ideal of love among betrothed couples in general. I said, "There are blighted potatoes and there are sound potatoes." Ibsen replied, "I very much fear I have never seen any of those potatoes that were sound."

Nevertheless, there runs through Ibsen's works a continually increasing faith in woman, and tendency to glorify woman. At times this appears in a rather revolting, dogmatic way, as when Solveig, in "Peer Gynt" after the traditional style of Goethe's "Faust" and Paludan-Müller's "Adam Homo," through her faithful love, saves the soul of her lover, – in this instance an altogether too unworthy being; but this faith in woman, with which Ibsen evidently desires to counterbalance his contempt for man, is ever present, and has been productive of a series of true and beautiful female characterizations, such as Margrete in "The Pretenders," who is represented by a few delicate strokes in imperishable beauty; or Selma in "The Young Men's Union," who may be regarded as the first draught of Nora. When this figure was new, I remarked in a review that the drama did not afford sufficient play for it, that an entire new drama should be written expressly for it. This was done in "Et Dukkehjem" (A Model Home).

As far as I can judge, the idea of woman's emancipation, in the modern acceptation of the phrase, was far from being familiar and dear to Henrik Ibsen at the outset of his career. On the contrary, he did not originally possess a large amount of sympathy for woman. There are authors who have a peculiar affinity for women, who have, indeed, a decided feminine element in their own natures. Ibsen does not belong to this class. I am quite confident he takes far more pleasure in conversation with men than with women, and he has certainly passed much less time in the society of women than is the wont of poets. Moreover, the attempt of modern literature to prove the justice of a change in woman's social status, was at first far from finding an enthusiastic admirer in him.. Mill's book on the woman question was, if I mistake not, actually repulsive to him in the early days of its appearance, and Mill, as a writer, inspired him with no sympathy whatever. Indeed, to Ibsen, with his marked individuality, Mill's statement, or rather confession, that he owed much in his writings, indeed the best they contained, to his wife, seemed absurdly ludicrous. "Only fancy," he said, smiling, "what it would be to read Hegel or Krause with the idea that it was quite uncertain whether we were following the thoughts of Mr. or of Mrs. Hegel, of Mr. or of Mrs. Krause!"

It does not seem to me that this aversion on the part of Ibsen was wholly without a connection with the poet's sentiments in regard to the woman question. I am rather inclined to think there was in his mind an opposition to the latter during its early stages, partly owing to the influences of his education, partly owing to a natural irritation at the caricature forms of female emancipation, but an opposition whose destiny it was to give place to passionate adherence. It is Ibsen's reason that has wrought the change in his emotional nature. Like a true poet, he is capable of becoming, with his whole soul, the organ of an idea which once had left him cold, the moment he feels this idea to be one of those battle-thoughts of the period that are fraught with rich meaning for the future. And when we read those words, that fall like sword-strokes, in the last scene of "A Model Home," Helmer's —

"There is no one who yields up his honor for those whom he loves,"

and Nora's —

"'Tis what hundreds and thousands of women have done,"

words in which a more hideous abyss yawns between the husband and wife that sit opposite each other at table than the nether world ever opened in the old dramas of romance, we feel, indeed, that Ibsen has not merely filled his soul with the thoughts of the age; he has fashioned them on a grander scale than any one else, he has ground them until they are sharper than in the hands of others, so that with his consummate art he can make them penetrate even the most hardened hearts. This drama produced a powerful, although alarming effect. For centuries society, through its priests and poets, had conceived of marriage, founded in love and undisturbed by the influence of a third person, as a sure haven of bliss, and had celebrated it as such in song. Now it was discovered that this haven was full of rocks and shoals. It actually seemed as though Ibsen had extinguished all the beacon lights.

"Gjengangere" (Apparitions) followed. Here, again, as in "A Model Home," a marriage was analyzed, the opposite of the one in the last-named drama. The grandeur and exquisite delicacy of "A Model Home" consisted chiefly in the fact that Ibsen had conceded so much to the husband. For what had he not conceded to this man! He is a thoroughly honorable, conscientiously upright man, an excellent provider for his family, a man who is properly jealous of his independence in his dealings with strangers and subordinates, a strict and loving father, a good-hearted, highly cultivated man, – and yet! Yet this man's wife was a victim, and his marriage a whited sepulchre.

The man into whose marriage we gain deep insight in "Apparitions" is a person of a totally opposite character; he is a coarse-natured drunkard, is recklessly dissolute, yet is endowed with so many of those qualities licentious men often have at their command with which to win hearts, and knows how to make himself so agreeable, that it is possible for his wife to screen his life and save appearances. By remaining with him, by giving herself to him, she not only sacrifices her own welfare and happiness, she also becomes the mother of a being whose life is wrecked from birth, a son who is overtaken by deadly impotence, despair, insanity, and idiocy, as he crosses the threshold of manhood, – and yet! Yet that portion of the community which is represented by Pastor Manders deems her sacrifice of herself and her son her simple duty, and her attempted revolt at her hideous fate a crime.

This is the pathos of the play, and this same pathos it was that terrified the great Philistine world more than "A Model Home" had done. This time it seemed as though the stars had been extinguished by Ibsen. "Not the faintest ray of light appears."

The relation between man and woman in "Apparitions" is placed in a totally new light, inasmuch as it is measured by responsibility to the child. The drama treats, in a poetic form, the thought of heredity, represents, on the basis of that determinism which is the latest word of modern science on the question, the dependence of the child's destiny on the parents, and gives this fact a background of a nature calculated to arouse profound thought and feeling by indicating the more universal fact to which the title points; namely, the hereditary transmission of emotions (and through these of dogmas) whose essential conditions are extinct, and have given place to others at variance with these emotions.

In close relation to Ibsen's psychological development there is associated a principal interest in this grasp or choice of themes, inasmuch as we here for the first time see the great dramatist break the circle it has been the wont of his disposition to cast about the single individual. In a letter of the year 1871, Ibsen wrote me the following words, which are indicative of much in his character: —

"To tell the truth, I have never had a very great fancy for solidarity. I have, indeed, only taken it into my cargo as a matter of traditional dogmatism. If we only had the courage to leave it entirely out of consideration, we might possibly become rid of the ballast that weighs most heavily on personality…"

Now, ten years later, his eyes are opened to the significance of solidarity; he has become thoroughly convinced that "courage" is of no avail in the attempt to cast it overboard, and that we are all from our birth consolidated with persons and things in a way we ourselves cannot control. Evidently, as years pass on, Ibsen enters into a more and more intimate relation with the fundamental ideas of the age.

Thus we see him, who at first, with almost all the now living older writers of the day, stood waist-deep in the romantic period, gradually work his way out of it, and become more and more modern, until finally he grows to be the most modern of modern writers. In my estimation, this is his imperishable glory, and will invest his works with enduring life. For the modern is not the ephemeral; it is the vital flame itself, the life-spark, the ideal soul of an age.

The ill feeling aroused by "Apparitions" in many circles, and the coarse criticism aimed at the drama, could have no power to repress Ibsen's literary productivity, but at first it had a very depressing effect on him. He wrote of it: —

"When I think how sluggish and dull and stupid affairs are in Norway, when I observe how superficial, how shallow, the entire mode of contemplation proves itself to be, a profound melancholy takes possession of me, and I feel inclined to put an immediate end to my literary activity. There is no demand at home for poetic works proper; people have all that is required in the "Storthing" organ and in the Lutheran weekly journal, and, besides, they have the party newspapers. I have not the least talent either for citizenship or for orthodoxy, and that for which I feel no talent I avoid. To me, freedom is the highest and first life requisite. At home, however, people do not concern themselves much about freedom; they care only for special liberties, for some more, for some less, according to party standpoint. Most painfully am I moved by this crude state of affairs, this vulgarism in our public discussions. Under the very laudable endeavor to transform our people into a democratic community, quite a long stretch of the road is being traversed that leads to plebeian conditions. The intellectual aristocracy seems to be on the decline at home…"

The storm aroused by "Apparitions" could exercise no other influence on Ibsen than one that strengthened him in his conviction of the stupidity of the majority. He wrote to me about this, Jan. 3, 1882, as follows: —

"Björnson says, 'The majority is always right,' and for a practical politician this is the proper thing to say. I, on the contrary, must necessarily say, The minority is always right. As a matter of course, I do not refer to that minority of people who are in a state of stagnation, and who are left in the lurch by the great intermediate party, with us called liberals; but I mean that minority which is the advance guard in the forward march toward a goal the majority is not yet in a condition to attain."68

A good omen for the future works of Ibsen is the fact that, in the same ratio that he becomes modern, his greatness as a literary artist increases. The ideas of the new era have not assumed the forms of symbols or of types with him, but of individuals. In his younger years, he had a proclivity for great symbolic ideals, – Brand, Peer Gynt, etc.; but, singularly enough, the more his store of thoughts increased, the clearer they became and the more artistic his presentation of them. His mastery of technicalities, of late years, has increased from work to work. In "A Model Home," he surpassed the technique of the most celebrated French dramatists; and in "Apparitions" (notwithstanding certain unsatisfactory points), he displayed a dramatic firmness, simplicity, and delicacy, which recalls the antique tragedy in the hands of Sophocles (especially King Œdipus).

This continual progress is a matter dependent on Ibsen's artistic earnestness, his conscientious industry. He labors very slowly, writes and re-writes his works, until they appear in a neat-looking manuscript without a single correction, each page as smooth and as firm as a marble plate, on which the tooth of time can leave no impression. This never-ceasing ascent in perfection depends, too, even more closely on the fact that Ibsen is solely and entirely a poet, and has never wished to be anything but a poet. True, it may give the impression of coldness and undue reserve, when an author can be led by no outward recurrence whatever to mingle his voice in the universal debate; when nothing that occurs can irritate or inspire him to an outburst. The only newspaper articles Ibsen has written during the past five years are probably a few that bore on his rights in reference to his publishers, or his griefs in regard to the plunderings of his foreign translators, – therefore, on his personal and private interests; but it should not be forgotten that this reserve of his has permitted him to hold the mastery in his art unwaveringly before his eyes as a fixed idea, an ideal of which he never loses sight; and this mastery he has attained. A sharper contrast can scarcely be imagined than that which is presented by this poet, who remains alone in the South, shut off on every side from the surrounding world, free from all distraction, shaping and fashioning his artistic master-works; and his brother-poet in the North, who with full, perhaps too full hands, pours into the press his great and small articles on political, social, and religious questions, who is never afraid to let his name appear anywhere, who, paying no heed to the ordinary laws of prudence which prescribe that one should allow one's absence to be felt occasionally and one's presence to be desired, writes poems, makes public speeches, causes agitations, travels from one public gathering to another, and is most at his ease on the speaker's platform, with a thousand friends and a hundred enemies about him, holding them breathless with his daring and consummate art.

Henrik Ibsen bears no likeness to any other living poet, and is influenced by none. As minds that bear a somewhat distant relationship to him, may, perhaps with some justice, be mentioned the late German poets, Otto Ludwig and Friedrich Hebbel, both of whom, however, are far less modern in their tendencies than he. In the severity of his satire, too, there may be said to be a reminder of Dumas and Sardou. With Björnson, whose name almost insensibly falls from the pen when it busies itself with Ibsen, he has, notwithstanding all dissimilarities of nature, those things in common which naturally follow in the track of compatriots and contemporaries whose development has proceeded side by side, and who have been roused to emulation in the treatment of the same themes. That Ibsen had written "De Unges Forbund" (The Young Men's Union), gave Björnson an impulse to write dramas on civil conditions. When Björnson had written "En Fallit" (The Bankrupt), Ibsen was impelled to vary the subject in "Samfundets Stötter" (The Pillars of Society). Björnson was obliged, as he has informed me, to strike out a passage in the manuscript of his "Stöv" (Dust), because it appeared almost word for word in Henrik Ibsen's "Gjengangere" (Apparitions), which was issued before the story was printed. The fact is, the two poets have traversed an almost parallel path of development. Henrik Ibsen succeeded rather earlier than Björnson in working his way out of the old historic, legendary, and fantastic materials; for in the freer position he held, tom loose from home and standing amid the breakers of contemporary ideas, he had less to hold him back from following the call of his age, less naïveté, less reverence. But the difference in time between the transition of the two poets from the period when their materials were viewed from the standpoint of romance, to that where the realistic point of view predominated, was confined to a few years, and is lost sight of entirely, when we consider the remarkable uniformity of the stages of their poetic career. Björnson and Ibsen may be compared in this respect, as it seems to me, to the two old Norse kings, Sigurd and Eystein, in the famous dialogue furnished by the saga, and of which Björnson has availed himself in his "Sigurd Jorsalfar" (Sigurd the Crusader). The one has remained at home and there civilized his fatherland; the other has tom himself away from home, has journeyed far and wide, and in his bold, adventurous courses has won honor for his fatherland. Each has his admirers, each his martial suite, who elevates the one at the expense of the other. Still, they are brothers, even though for a season they were hostile brothers, and it is simple justice that the kingdom – as it is done in the drama of Björnson – should peacefully be divided between them.69

1

One's movements, step by step to measure,

2

Gesammelte Werke, iv. 135.

3

Ibid., v. 199.

4

Kinder der Welt, ii. 162.

5

Kinder der Welt, iii. 210, 242, 256.

6

Kinder der Welt, iii. 109.

7

Kinder der Welt, i. III; Gesammelte Werke, vi. 206.

8

Gesammelte Werke, iii. 300.

9

Kinder der Welt, ii. 47.

10

Gesammelte Werke, v. 201. On page 175 the word "vornehm" is used by her.

11

Gesammelte Werke, viii. 44, 246, 321.

12

Kinder der Welt, ii. 355. "That you are the best, deepest, purest, noblest of women" – "Poor, brave, free-born breast – bow well it has preserved its patent of nobility." Kinder der Welt, iii. 309.

13

Im Paradiese, iii. 6.

14

Gesammelte Werke, v. 197.

15

Gesammelte Werke, ix. 73.

16

Gesammelte Werke, viii. 168.

17

Gesammelte Werke, vi. 71: "I have been sold once in my life. How mankind will now blame me if I give myself as a free-will offering in order to suppress the anguish of that disgrace!"

18

Gesammelte Werke, vi. 40.

19

Gesammelte Werke, vi. 5.

20

Heyse und Kurz, Novellenschatz des Auslandes, Bd. VIII.

21

Heyse und Kurz, Deutscher Novellenschatz, Bd. I. s. xix.

22

Kinder der Welt, ii. 265.

23

Did not a critic of this sort take it upon himself to get up a "warning" in the same style, against Goethe's "Faust"? "The purport of this immoral work," he wrote, "is the following: A physician (Dr. Med.), already pretty well advanced in years, is weary of study, and hankers after carnal pleasures. Finally he signs a bond with the devil. The latter leads him through divers low diversions (which, for instance, consist in making half-drunk students still more drunk) to a burgher's daughter, a young maiden, whom Faust (the doctor) at once attempts to seduce. A couple of rendez-vous at the house of an old procuress prepare the way for this. As the seduction, however, cannot be brought about speedily enough, the devil gives Faust a jewel-case to present to the young maiden. Wholly powerless to resist this gift, that is to say, not even seduced, simply purchased, Gretchen yields to Faust; and in order to be all the more undisturbed with her lover she doses her old mother with a narcotic, which kills the old woman. Then after being the cause of her brother's death, she destroys her child, the fruit of her shame. In prison she employs herself in singing obscene songs. That her lover left her in the lurch we cannot wonder when we consider his religious principles. He is, as the scene in which his donna questions him about his faith clearly proves, no Christian; indeed, he does not even seem to believe in a God, although he endeavors to grasp at all sorts of empty subterfuges to conceal his absolute unbelief.