Directions: 1) Please read the background material on Henrik Ibsen. 2) In a blog post, please comment on the following: How did Ibsen's life impact his plays? How did Ibsen change modern drama? In the article, below, there are several quotations by Ibsen or about Ibsen. Choose 1-2 quotations, cut and paste them into your response. Next, explain its significance to Ibsen and to you as a scholar of drama. I look forward to your responses. We will be reading his play Ghosts.
1850 - Catiline (Catilina)
1850 - The Burial Mound also known as The Warrior's Barrow (Kjæmpehøjen)
1851 - Norma (Norma)
1852 - St. John's Eve (Sancthansnatten)
1854 - Lady Inger of Oestraat (Fru Inger til Østeraad)
1855 - The Feast at Solhaug (Gildet paa Solhoug)
1856 - Olaf Liljekrans (Olaf Liljekrans)
1857 - The Vikings at Helgeland (Hærmændene paa Helgeland)
1862 - Digte - only released collection of poetry
1862 - Love's Comedy (Kjærlighedens Komedie)
1863 - The Pretenders (Kongs-Emnerne)
1866 - Brand (Brand)
1867 - Peer Gynt (Peer Gynt)
1869 - The League of Youth (De unges Forbund)
1873 - Emperor and Galilean (Kejser og Galilæer)
1877 - Pillars of Society (Samfundets Støtter)
1879 - A Doll House (Et Dukkehjem)
1881 - Ghosts (Gengangere)
1882 - An Enemy of the People (En Folkefiende)
1884 - The Wild Duck (Vildanden)
1886 - Rosmersholm (Rosmersholm)
1888 - The Lady from the Sea (Fruen fra Havet)
1890 - Hedda Gabler (Hedda Gabler)
1892 - The Master Builder (Bygmester Solness)
1896 - John Gabriel Borkman (John Gabriel Borkman)
1899 - When We Dead Awaken (Når vi døde vaagner)
Introduction
Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) published his last drama, "When We Dead Awaken", in 1899, and he called it a dramatic epilogue. It was also destined to be the epilogue of his life's work, because illness prevented him from writing more. For half of a century he had devoted his life and his energies to the art of drama, and he had won international acclaim as the greatest and most influential dramatist of his time. He knew that he had gone further than anyone in putting Norway on the map.
Henrik Ibsen was also a major poet, and he published a collection of poems in 1871. However, drama was the focus of his real lyrical spirit. For a period of many hard years, he faced bitter opposition. But he finally triumphed over the conservatism and aesthetic prejudices of the contemporary critics and audiences. More than anyone, he gave theatrical art a new vitality by bringing into European bourgeois drama an ethical gravity, a psychological depth, and a social significance which the theater had lacked since the days of Shakespeare. In this manner, Ibsen strongly contributed to giving European drama a vitality and artistic quality comparable to the ancient Greek tragedies.
It is from this perspective we view his contribution to theatrical history. His realistic contemporary drama was a continuation of the European tradition of tragic plays. In these works he portrays people from the middle class of his day. These are people whose routines are suddenly upset as they are confronted with a deep crisis in their lives. They have been blindly following a way of life leading to the troubles and are themselves responsible for the crisis. Looking back on their lives, they are forced to confront themselves. However, Ibsen created another type of drama as well. In fact, he had been writing for 25 years before he, in 1877, created his first contemporary drama, "Pillars of Society".
Life and Writing
Ibsen's biography is lacking in grand and momentous episodes. His life as an artist can be seen as a singularly long and hard struggle leading to victory and fame - a hard road from poverty to international success. He spent all of 27 years abroad, in Italy and Germany. He left his land of birth at the age of 36 in 1864. It was not until he was 63 that he moved home again, to Kristiania (now Oslo), where he would die in 1906 at the age of 78.
In lbsen's last drama, "When We Dead Awaken", he describes the life of an artist that in many ways reflects on his own. The world renowned sculptor, Professor Rubek, has returned to Norway after many years abroad, and in spite of his fame and success, he feels no happiness. In the central work of his life, he has modeled a self-portrait titled "Remorse for a ruined life" During the play he is forced to admit that he has taken the pleasure out of his own life as well as spoiling others'. Everything has been sacrificed for his art - he has forsaken the love of his youth and his earlier idealism as well. It follows that he has actually betrayed his art by relinquishing these essentials. It is none other than his old flame Irene, the model who posed for him in his youth, who goes to him in his moment of destiny and tells him the truth: it is first when we dead awaken, that we see what is irremediable that we have never really lived.
It is the tragic life feeling itself that gives Ibsen's drama its special character, the experience of missing out on life and plodding along in a state of living death. The alternative is pictured as a utopian existence in freedom, truth and love - in short - a happy life. In Ibsen's world the main character strives toward a goal, but this struggle leads out into the cold, to loneliness. Yet the possibility of opting for another route is always there, one can chose human warmth and contact. The problem for Ibsen's protagonist is that both choices can appear to be good, and the individual does not see the consequences of the decision.
In "When We Dead Awaken" the chill of art is contrasted with life's warmth. In this perspective, art serves as a prison from which the artist neither can, nor wishes to escape. As Rubek says to Irene:
"I am an artist, Irene, and I take no shame to myself for the frailties that perhaps cling to me. For I was born to be an artist, you see. - And, do what I may, I shall never be anything else."
This is not an acceptable excuse for Irene, whom he has betrayed. She sees things from a different angle. She calls him a "poet", one who creates his own fictitious world, neglecting his humanity and that of the people who love him. Ella Rentheim, in "John Gabriel Borkman" (1896) makes the same complaint against the man who sacrificed her on the altar of his career. The tragic element in Ibsen's perspective is that for the type of people that concern him, this seems to be an insoluble conflict. Yet this fact does not exonerate them from the responsibility or their own decisions.
Although "When We Dead Awaken" criticizes the egocentricity of the artist, it would be going too far to view the drama as the writer's bitter self-examination. Rubek is not a self-portrait. However, some Ibsen researchers have seen him as a spokesman for the author's standpoint on the question of art. At one point, Rubek says that the public only relates to the external realistic "truth" in his human portrayal. What people do not understand is the hidden dimension in these portraits, all the deceitful motives that hide behind the respectable bourgeois facades. In his youth, Rubek had been inspired by an idealistic vision of a higher form of human existence. Experience has turned him into a disillusioned exposer of people, a man who believes he portrays life as it really is. It is the animal governing man that dominates his vision; this is Rubek's version of Zola's "La béte humaine", and he explains the changes in his art in the following way:
"I imagined that which I saw with my eyes around me in the world. I had to include it (...) and up from the fissures of the soil there now swarm men and women with dimly- suggested animal-faces. women and men - as I knew them in real life."
Understandably, some students of Ibsen have fallen into the temptation of drawing a parallel between life and art, and see this work as a merciless self-denunciation. Once again, "When We Dead Awaken" is by no means auto-biographical. Rubek's relationship with the writer has to be sought on a deeper level - in the conflicts that Ibsen, toward the end of his life, saw as a general and essential human problem.
Ibsen the Psychologist
In the work of the aging writer we meet a number of people who are experiencing similar conflicts. John Gabriel Borkman sacrifices his love for a dream of power and honor. Master builder Solness wrecks his family's lives in order to be regarded as an "artist" in his trade. And Hedda Gabler resolutely changes the fates of others in order to fulfill her own dream of freedom and independence. These examples of people who pursue their own goals, involuntarily trampling on the lives of others, are all drawn from the playwright's last decade of writing. In Ibsen's psychological analyses, he reveals the negative forces (he calls them "demons" and "trolls" in the minds of these people. His human characterization in these latter dramas is extremely complex - a common factor shared by all his last works, starting with "The Wild Duck" in 1884. In his last 15 years of writing, Ibsen developed his dialectical supremacy and his distinctive dramatic form - where realism, symbolism, and deep-digging psychological insights interact. It is this phase of his work that has prompted people to call him - rightly or wrongly - a "Freud of the theater." In any case, Freud and many other psychologists have made use of Ibsen's human portraits as a basis for character analysis or even to illustrate their own theories. Especially well known is Freud's analysis of Rebekka West in "Rosmersholm" (1886), a portrayal he discussed in 1916 together with other character types "who collapse under the weight of success." Freud sees Rebekka as a tragic victim of the Oedipus complex and an incestuous past. The analysis reveals perhaps more about Freud than about Ibsen. But Freud's influence, and the sway of psychoanalysis in general, have had a considerable effect on the way the Norwegian dramatist has been regarded.
Interest in Ibsen as a psychologist can too readily obscure other, equally important, sides of his art. His account of human life is from an acute social and conceptual perspective. Perhaps this is the essence of his art - that which turns it into existential drama exploring many facets of life. This concerns everything he wrote, even prior to his emergence as an international dramatist around 1880.
A Desperate Drama
Ibsen's work as a writer represents a long poetic contemplation of people's need to live differently than they do. Thus there is always a deep undercurrent of desperation in his work. Benedetto Croce called these portrayals of people who live in constant expectation and who are consumed by their pursuit of "something else" in life, "a desperate drama".
It is precisely this distance between what they can achieve and what they want to achieve that is the cause of the tragic (and in many cases the comic) aspect of these people's lives. Ibsen felt that this contradiction between will and real prospects was at the root of his art. Looking back on 25 years of writing in 1875, he declared that most of what he had written involved "the contradiction between ability and aspiration, between will and possibility". In this conflict he saw "humanity's and the individual's tragedy and comedy simultaneously." - A decade later, he created the tragicomic constellation of the priest Rosmer and his scruffy teacher Ulrik Brendel. These two men, who are reflections of each other, both end up on the brink of an abyss where all they see is life's total emptiness and insignificance.
In Ibsen's 12 modern contemporary plays, from "Pillars of Society" (1877) to "When We Dead Awaken" (1899), we are led time and again into the same milieu. His characters' are distinguished by their staunch, well-established bourgeois lives. Nevertheless, their world is threatened and threatening. It turns out that the world is in motion; old values and previous conceptions are adrift. The movement shakes up the life of the individual and jeopardizes the established social order. Here we see how the process has a psychological as well as a conceptual and social aspect. Yet what starts the whole process is the need for change, something springing forth from the individual's volition.
In this sense, Ibsen is a powerful conceptual writer. This does not mean that his main concern as a dramatist was the didactical use of theater, or the waging of an abstract ideological debate. (Some of his critics, contemporary and later, have made this accusation - and it's fairly obvious that Ibsen was drawn towards the didactic.) However, the basis of Ibsen's human portrayal is his characters' conceptions of what makes life worth living - their values and their understanding of existence. The concepts they use to describe their position may be unclear; their self-understanding may be intuitive and deficient. A good example of this is Ellida Wangel's description of her ambivalent attraction to the sea in "The Lady from the Sea" (1888). But for a long time, in Ellida's consciousness, a desire has grown for a freer life coupled with a need for other moral and social values than those dominating Dr. Wangel's bourgeois existence. And this discovery within her creates shockwaves on the psychological and the social plane.
The Human Conflicts
Ibsen himself has given the best characteristic of his approach to drama. This was as early as 1857 in a theater review:
"It is not the conscious strife between ideas parading before us, nor is this the situation in real life. What we see are human conflicts, and enwrapped in these, deep inside, lay ideas at battle - being defeated, or charged with victory."
This undoubtedly touches upon something essential in Ibsen's demands to dramatic art: it should as realistically as possible unify three elements: the psychological, the ideological and the social. At its best, the organic synthesis of these three elements is at the heart of Ibsen's drama. Perhaps he only succeeds completely in a few of his plays, such as "Ghosts", "The Wild Duck", and "Hedda Gabler". Interestingly, he considered his major work to be "Emperor and Galilean" (1873), contrary to everyone else. This could indicate how much emphasis he put on ideology, not overt, but as a conflict between opposing views toward life. Ibsen believed that he had created a fully "realistic" rendering of the inner conflict in the abandoned Julian. The truth is, however, that Julian is too marked by the dramatist's own thoughts - what he calls his "positive philosophy of life." Ibsen first succeeded as a theatrical writer when he seriously took another approach - the one he described in connection with "Hedda Gabler" (1890):
"My main goal has been to depict people, human moods and human fates, on the basis of certain predominant social conditions and perceptions."
Ibsen took many years, after "Emperor and Galilean", to orient himself in this direction. Five years after that great historical dramatization of ideas came "Pillars of Society", the starting point for lbsen's reputation as a European theatrical writer.
Ibsen's International Breakthrough
In 1879, Ibsen sent Nora Helmer out into the world with a demand that a woman too must have the freedom to develop as an adult, independent, and responsible person. The playwright was now over 50, and had finally been recognized outside of the Nordic countries. "Pillars of Society". had admittedly opened the German borders for him, but it was "A Doll's House". and "Ghost" (1881) which in the 1880s led him into the European avant-garde.
"A Doll's House" has a plot which he repeated in many subsequent works, in the phase when he cultivated "critical realism". We experience the individual in opposition to the majority, society's oppressive authority. Nora puts it this way: "I will have to find out who is right, society or myself."
As noted earlier, when the individual intellectually frees himself from traditional ways of thinking, serious conflicts arise. For a short period around 1880, it appears that Ibsen was relatively optimistic about the individual's chances of succeeding on his own. Although her future is insecure in many ways, Nora seems to have a real chance of finding the freedom and independence she is seeking. Ibsen can be criticized for his somewhat superficial treatment of the problems a divorced woman without means would face in contemporary society. But it was the moral problems that concerned him as a writer, not the practical and economic ones.
A Singular Success
In spite of Nora's uncertain future prospects, she has served in a number of countries as a symbol for women fighting for liberation and equality. In this connection, she is the most "international" of lbsen's characters. Yet this is a rather singular success. The middle-class public has enthusiastically applauded a woman who leaves her children and husband, completely breaking off with the most important institution in the bourgeois society - the family!
This points to the basis of Ibsen's international success. He took deep schisms and acute problems that afflicted the bourgeois family and placed them on the stage. On the surface, the middle-class homes gave an impression of success - and appeared to reflect a picture of a healthy and stable society. But Ibsen dramatizes the hidden conflicts in this society by opening the doors to the private, and secret rooms of the bourgeois homes. He shows what can be hiding behind the beautiful façades: moral duplicity, confinement, betrayal, and fraud not to mention a constant insecurity. These were the aspects of the middle-class life one was not supposed to mention in public, as Pastor Manders wished Mrs. Alving to keep secret her reading and everything else that threatened the atmosphere at Rosenvold in "Ghosts". In the same manner, the social leaders in "Rosmersholm" put pressure on Rosmer to keep him from telling that he, the priest, had given up the Christian faith.
But Ibsen did not remain silent, and the spotlights of his plays made contemporary aspects of life highly visible. He disrupted the peace of the lives of the bourgeoisie by reminding them that they had climbed to their position of social power by mastering quite different ideals than tranquillity, order and stability. The bourgeoisie had betrayed its own motto of "freedom, equality, and brotherhood", and especially after the revolutionary year 1848 they had become defenders of the status quo. There was, of course, a liberal opposition within their class, and Ibsen openly joins these ranks in his first modern contemporary drama. He considered this movement for freedom and progress to be the true "European" point of view. As early as 1870, he wrote to the Danish critic Georg Brandes that it was imperative to return to the ideas of the French revolution, freedom, equality, and brotherhood. The words need a new meaning in keeping with the times, he claimed. In 1875 he writes, again to Brandes:
"Why are you, and the rest of us who hold the European viewpoint, so isolated at home?"
Eventually, as Ibsen grew older, he had trouble accepting certain extreme forms of liberalism which overemphasized the individual's sovereign right to self-realization and to some extent radically departed from past norms and values. In "Rosmersholm", he points out the dangers of radicalism built solely on individual moral norms. It is obvious here that Ibsen is concerned with European culture's basis in a Christian inspired moral tradition. One has to build on this, he indicates, even though one has given up the Christian faith. This is certainly the conclusion that Rebekka West reaches.
Simultaneously, this drama, like "Ghosts", is a painful clash with the melancholic, killjoy aspects of the Christian bourgeois tradition which subdues the human spirit. Both these works contain, for all their despair, a warm defense of happiness and the joy of life - pitted against the bourgeois society's emphasis on duty, law, and order.
It was in the 1870s that Ibsen oriented himself toward his "European" point of view. Even though he lived abroad, he continually chose a Norwegian setting for his contemporary dramas. As a rule, we find ourselves in a small Norwegian coastal town, the kind Ibsen knew so well from his childhood in Skien and his youth in Grimstad. The background of the young Ibsen certainly gave him a sharp eye for social forces and conflicts arising from differing viewpoints. In small societies, such as the typical Norwegian coastal town, these social and ideological conflicts are more exposed than they would be in a larger city.
Ibsen's first painful experiences came from such a small community. He had seen how conventions, traditions, and norms could exercise a negative control over the individual, create anxiety, and inhibit a natural and joyful lifestyle. This is the atmosphere of the "ghosts" as Mrs. Alving experiences it. According to her, it makes people "afraid of the light."
This was the atmosphere of his youth that formed the basis for his writing and world fame. As an insecure writer and man of the theater in a stifling Norwegian milieu, he set out to create a new Norwegian drama. He began with this national perspective. At the same time, from his first journey abroad, he oriented himself toward the European tradition of theater.
lbsen's Years of Learning
In the history of drama, early in the 1850s Ibsen carried on the traditions of two highly dissimilar writers, the Frenchman Eugéne Scribe (1791-1861) and the German Friedrich Hebbel (1813-63). For 11 years the young Ibsen was occupied with day to day practical stagework, and it follows that he had to keep himself well informed about the latest contemporary Euro-heatrical art. He worked with rehearsals of new plays and was committed to writing for the theater.
Scribe could teach him how a drama's plot should be structured in a logically motivated progression of scenes. Hebbel provided him with an example of the way drama could be based on life's contemporary dialectics, creating a modern conceptual drama. Hebbel's pioneering work was his conveyance of the ideologicalconflicts of his day into the theater where he created "a drama of issues" pointing forward. He also knew how the Greek tragedy's retrospective technique could be used by a modern dramatist.
In other words, Ibsen was in close contact with the art of the stage for a long uninterrupted period. His six years at the theater in Bergen (1851-57) and the following four or five years at the theater in Kristiania from 1857 were not easy. But he acquired a sharp eye for theatrical techniques and possibilities.
During a study tour to Copenhagen and Dresden in 1852, he came across a dramaturgical work newly released in Germany. It was Hermann Hettner's "Das moderne Drama" (1852). This programmatic treatise for a new topical theater deeply affected Ibsen's development as a dramatist. In Hettner too, we see the strong influence of Scribe and Hebbel, combined with a passionate interest for Shakespeare. Ibsen also gleaned knowledge from other writers, most notably Schiller and the two Danes Adam Oehlenschleger (1779-1850) and John Ludvig Heiberg (1791-1860).
Ibsen's apprenticeship was long, lasting about 15 years, and included theater work he later would claim to be as difficult as "having an abortion every day." There was a strong pressure to produce hanging over him; one that led to fumbling attempts in many directions. He experienced a few minor artistic victories - and numerous defeats. Very few believed that he had the necessary gift to become more than a minor theatrical writer with a modicum of talent.
In spite of this insecurity, it is a determined young writer we see during these years. His goal was clearly national. Together with his friend and colleague Bjornstjerne Bjornson (1832-1910), he founded "The Norwegian Company" in 1859, an organ for Norwegian art and culture. They had a joint program for their activities. Ibsen was especially concerned with the role of theater in the young Norwegian nation's search for its own identity In these "nation-building" pursuits, he gathered his material from the country's medieval history and perfected his art as a dramatist. This is prominent in the work that caps Ibsen's period of apprenticeship, "The Pretenders" from 1863. The story takes place in Norway in the 1200s, a period marked by destructive strife. But Ibsen's perspective is Norway of the 1860s when he has the king, Haakon Haakonsson, express his thoughts on national unity:
"Norway was a kingdom, now it will be a nation (... ) all shall be as one hereafter, and all shall know in themselves that they are one!"
"The Pretenders" was Ibsen's breakthrough, yet he had to wait a few years before being recognized as one of the country's leading writers. This honor came in 1866 with "Brand" "The Pretenders", constitutes the end of his close relationship with Norwegian theater. It was also his farewell performance - he now started his long exile. In the years that followed, he turned away from the stage and sought a reading public.
The Great Topical Dramas
Both the great dramas for reading, "Brand" (1866) and "Peer Gynt" (1867), were based on Ibsen's problematic relationship with his country of birth. Political developments in 1864 led him to lose his optimistic belief in his country's future. He even began to doubt whether his countrymen had a historical raison d'être as a nation.
What he had earlier treated as a national problem of identity now became a question of the individual's personal integrity. It was no longer sufficient to dwell on an earlier historical era of greatness and focus on the continuity of the nation's life. Ibsen turned away from history, and confronted what he considered the main contemporary problem - a nation can only rise up culturally by means of the individual's exertion of will. "Brand" is mainly a drama with a message that the individual must follow the path of volition in order to achieve true humanity In addition, this is the only way to real freedom - for the individual, and it follows, for society as a whole.
In the two rather different twin works "Brand" and "Peer Gynt", the focus is on the problem of personality, Ibsen dramatizes the conflict between an opportunistic acting out of an unnatural role, and a dedication to a demanding lifelong quest. In "Peer Gynt", the dramatist created a scene which artistically illustrates this situation of conflict. The aging Peer, on his way back to his Norwegian roots is forced to come to terms with himself. As he looks back upon his wasted life, he peels an onion. He lets each layer represent a different role he has played. But he finds no core. He has to face the fact that he has become "no one", that he has no "self".
"So unspeakably poor, then, a soul can go back to nothingness, in the misty gray. You beautiful earth, don't be annoyed that I left no sign when I walked your grass. You beautiful sun, in vain you've shed your glorious light on an empty house. There was no one within to cheer and warm; - The owner, they tell me, was never at home."
Peer is the weak, spineless person - Brand's antithesis. But it is precisely in Ibsen's living portrayal of a personality's "dissolution" in changing roles, that some historians of the theater see the harbinger of a modernistic perception of the individual. The British drama researcher Ronald Gaskell puts it this way: "Peer Gynt" inaugurates the drama of the modern mind", and he continues: "Indeed, if Surrealism and Expressionism in the theater can be said to have any single source, the source is undoubtedly "Peer Gynt".
Thus does this early Ibsen drama though very "Norwegian" and romantic claim a central position in theatrical history, even though it was not written for the stage. In fact, it is "Peer Gynt" that in modern times has helped Ibsen to retain his position as a vital and relevant writer. Thus it was not only his contemporary plays that have made him one of the most towering figures in the history of the theater. Although it was mainly these works the well-known Swedish researcher in drama, Martin Lamm, had in mind when he claimed:
"Ibsen's drama is the Rome of modern drama: all roads lead to it - and from it."
Even though Ibsen withdrew from his Norwegian starting point in the 1870s and became "a European," he was always deeply marked by the country he left in 1864, and to which he first returned as an aging celebrity. It was not easy for him to return. The many years abroad, and the long struggle for recognition, had left their indelible stamp. Towards the end of his career, he said that he really was not happy with the fantastic life he had lived. He felt homeless - even in his mother country.
But it is precisely this tension between the Norwegian and the foreign (an element of freer European culture) in Ibsen that characterized him more than anything else as an individual and a writer. His independent position in what he called "the great, free, cultural situation" provided him with the broad perspective of distance, and freedom. Simultaneously, the Norwegian in him created a longing for a more liberated and happier life. This is the longing for the sun in the grave writer's poetic world. He never denied his distinctive Norwegian character. Toward the end of his life, he said to a German friend:
He who wishes to understand me, must know Norway. The magnificent, but severe, natural environment surrounding people up there in the north, the lonely, secluded life - the farms are miles apart - forces them to be unconcerned with others, to keep to their own. That is why they become introspective and serious, they brood and doubt - and they often lose faith. At home every other person is a philosopher! There, the long, dark, winters come with their thick fogs enveloping the houses - oh, how they long for the sun!
Major Plays
“Only by grasping and comprehending my entire production as a continuous and coherent whole will the reader be able to receive the precise impression I sought to convey in the individual parts…I therefore appeal to the reader that he not put any play aside, and not skip anything, but that he absorb the plays…in the order in which I wrote them.” - Henrik Ibsen1850 - Catiline (Catilina)
1850 - The Burial Mound also known as The Warrior's Barrow (Kjæmpehøjen)
1851 - Norma (Norma)
1852 - St. John's Eve (Sancthansnatten)
1854 - Lady Inger of Oestraat (Fru Inger til Østeraad)
1855 - The Feast at Solhaug (Gildet paa Solhoug)
1856 - Olaf Liljekrans (Olaf Liljekrans)
1857 - The Vikings at Helgeland (Hærmændene paa Helgeland)
1862 - Digte - only released collection of poetry
1862 - Love's Comedy (Kjærlighedens Komedie)
1863 - The Pretenders (Kongs-Emnerne)
1866 - Brand (Brand)
1867 - Peer Gynt (Peer Gynt)
1869 - The League of Youth (De unges Forbund)
1873 - Emperor and Galilean (Kejser og Galilæer)
1877 - Pillars of Society (Samfundets Støtter)
1879 - A Doll House (Et Dukkehjem)
1881 - Ghosts (Gengangere)
1882 - An Enemy of the People (En Folkefiende)
1884 - The Wild Duck (Vildanden)
1886 - Rosmersholm (Rosmersholm)
1888 - The Lady from the Sea (Fruen fra Havet)
1890 - Hedda Gabler (Hedda Gabler)
1892 - The Master Builder (Bygmester Solness)
1896 - John Gabriel Borkman (John Gabriel Borkman)
1899 - When We Dead Awaken (Når vi døde vaagner)
Background Material by Professor Bjorn Hemmer, University of Oslo
Introduction
Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) published his last drama, "When We Dead Awaken", in 1899, and he called it a dramatic epilogue. It was also destined to be the epilogue of his life's work, because illness prevented him from writing more. For half of a century he had devoted his life and his energies to the art of drama, and he had won international acclaim as the greatest and most influential dramatist of his time. He knew that he had gone further than anyone in putting Norway on the map.
Henrik Ibsen was also a major poet, and he published a collection of poems in 1871. However, drama was the focus of his real lyrical spirit. For a period of many hard years, he faced bitter opposition. But he finally triumphed over the conservatism and aesthetic prejudices of the contemporary critics and audiences. More than anyone, he gave theatrical art a new vitality by bringing into European bourgeois drama an ethical gravity, a psychological depth, and a social significance which the theater had lacked since the days of Shakespeare. In this manner, Ibsen strongly contributed to giving European drama a vitality and artistic quality comparable to the ancient Greek tragedies.
It is from this perspective we view his contribution to theatrical history. His realistic contemporary drama was a continuation of the European tradition of tragic plays. In these works he portrays people from the middle class of his day. These are people whose routines are suddenly upset as they are confronted with a deep crisis in their lives. They have been blindly following a way of life leading to the troubles and are themselves responsible for the crisis. Looking back on their lives, they are forced to confront themselves. However, Ibsen created another type of drama as well. In fact, he had been writing for 25 years before he, in 1877, created his first contemporary drama, "Pillars of Society".
Life and Writing
Ibsen's biography is lacking in grand and momentous episodes. His life as an artist can be seen as a singularly long and hard struggle leading to victory and fame - a hard road from poverty to international success. He spent all of 27 years abroad, in Italy and Germany. He left his land of birth at the age of 36 in 1864. It was not until he was 63 that he moved home again, to Kristiania (now Oslo), where he would die in 1906 at the age of 78.
In lbsen's last drama, "When We Dead Awaken", he describes the life of an artist that in many ways reflects on his own. The world renowned sculptor, Professor Rubek, has returned to Norway after many years abroad, and in spite of his fame and success, he feels no happiness. In the central work of his life, he has modeled a self-portrait titled "Remorse for a ruined life" During the play he is forced to admit that he has taken the pleasure out of his own life as well as spoiling others'. Everything has been sacrificed for his art - he has forsaken the love of his youth and his earlier idealism as well. It follows that he has actually betrayed his art by relinquishing these essentials. It is none other than his old flame Irene, the model who posed for him in his youth, who goes to him in his moment of destiny and tells him the truth: it is first when we dead awaken, that we see what is irremediable that we have never really lived.
It is the tragic life feeling itself that gives Ibsen's drama its special character, the experience of missing out on life and plodding along in a state of living death. The alternative is pictured as a utopian existence in freedom, truth and love - in short - a happy life. In Ibsen's world the main character strives toward a goal, but this struggle leads out into the cold, to loneliness. Yet the possibility of opting for another route is always there, one can chose human warmth and contact. The problem for Ibsen's protagonist is that both choices can appear to be good, and the individual does not see the consequences of the decision.
In "When We Dead Awaken" the chill of art is contrasted with life's warmth. In this perspective, art serves as a prison from which the artist neither can, nor wishes to escape. As Rubek says to Irene:
"I am an artist, Irene, and I take no shame to myself for the frailties that perhaps cling to me. For I was born to be an artist, you see. - And, do what I may, I shall never be anything else."
This is not an acceptable excuse for Irene, whom he has betrayed. She sees things from a different angle. She calls him a "poet", one who creates his own fictitious world, neglecting his humanity and that of the people who love him. Ella Rentheim, in "John Gabriel Borkman" (1896) makes the same complaint against the man who sacrificed her on the altar of his career. The tragic element in Ibsen's perspective is that for the type of people that concern him, this seems to be an insoluble conflict. Yet this fact does not exonerate them from the responsibility or their own decisions.
Although "When We Dead Awaken" criticizes the egocentricity of the artist, it would be going too far to view the drama as the writer's bitter self-examination. Rubek is not a self-portrait. However, some Ibsen researchers have seen him as a spokesman for the author's standpoint on the question of art. At one point, Rubek says that the public only relates to the external realistic "truth" in his human portrayal. What people do not understand is the hidden dimension in these portraits, all the deceitful motives that hide behind the respectable bourgeois facades. In his youth, Rubek had been inspired by an idealistic vision of a higher form of human existence. Experience has turned him into a disillusioned exposer of people, a man who believes he portrays life as it really is. It is the animal governing man that dominates his vision; this is Rubek's version of Zola's "La béte humaine", and he explains the changes in his art in the following way:
"I imagined that which I saw with my eyes around me in the world. I had to include it (...) and up from the fissures of the soil there now swarm men and women with dimly- suggested animal-faces. women and men - as I knew them in real life."
Understandably, some students of Ibsen have fallen into the temptation of drawing a parallel between life and art, and see this work as a merciless self-denunciation. Once again, "When We Dead Awaken" is by no means auto-biographical. Rubek's relationship with the writer has to be sought on a deeper level - in the conflicts that Ibsen, toward the end of his life, saw as a general and essential human problem.
Ibsen the Psychologist
In the work of the aging writer we meet a number of people who are experiencing similar conflicts. John Gabriel Borkman sacrifices his love for a dream of power and honor. Master builder Solness wrecks his family's lives in order to be regarded as an "artist" in his trade. And Hedda Gabler resolutely changes the fates of others in order to fulfill her own dream of freedom and independence. These examples of people who pursue their own goals, involuntarily trampling on the lives of others, are all drawn from the playwright's last decade of writing. In Ibsen's psychological analyses, he reveals the negative forces (he calls them "demons" and "trolls" in the minds of these people. His human characterization in these latter dramas is extremely complex - a common factor shared by all his last works, starting with "The Wild Duck" in 1884. In his last 15 years of writing, Ibsen developed his dialectical supremacy and his distinctive dramatic form - where realism, symbolism, and deep-digging psychological insights interact. It is this phase of his work that has prompted people to call him - rightly or wrongly - a "Freud of the theater." In any case, Freud and many other psychologists have made use of Ibsen's human portraits as a basis for character analysis or even to illustrate their own theories. Especially well known is Freud's analysis of Rebekka West in "Rosmersholm" (1886), a portrayal he discussed in 1916 together with other character types "who collapse under the weight of success." Freud sees Rebekka as a tragic victim of the Oedipus complex and an incestuous past. The analysis reveals perhaps more about Freud than about Ibsen. But Freud's influence, and the sway of psychoanalysis in general, have had a considerable effect on the way the Norwegian dramatist has been regarded.
Interest in Ibsen as a psychologist can too readily obscure other, equally important, sides of his art. His account of human life is from an acute social and conceptual perspective. Perhaps this is the essence of his art - that which turns it into existential drama exploring many facets of life. This concerns everything he wrote, even prior to his emergence as an international dramatist around 1880.
A Desperate Drama
Ibsen's work as a writer represents a long poetic contemplation of people's need to live differently than they do. Thus there is always a deep undercurrent of desperation in his work. Benedetto Croce called these portrayals of people who live in constant expectation and who are consumed by their pursuit of "something else" in life, "a desperate drama".
It is precisely this distance between what they can achieve and what they want to achieve that is the cause of the tragic (and in many cases the comic) aspect of these people's lives. Ibsen felt that this contradiction between will and real prospects was at the root of his art. Looking back on 25 years of writing in 1875, he declared that most of what he had written involved "the contradiction between ability and aspiration, between will and possibility". In this conflict he saw "humanity's and the individual's tragedy and comedy simultaneously." - A decade later, he created the tragicomic constellation of the priest Rosmer and his scruffy teacher Ulrik Brendel. These two men, who are reflections of each other, both end up on the brink of an abyss where all they see is life's total emptiness and insignificance.
In Ibsen's 12 modern contemporary plays, from "Pillars of Society" (1877) to "When We Dead Awaken" (1899), we are led time and again into the same milieu. His characters' are distinguished by their staunch, well-established bourgeois lives. Nevertheless, their world is threatened and threatening. It turns out that the world is in motion; old values and previous conceptions are adrift. The movement shakes up the life of the individual and jeopardizes the established social order. Here we see how the process has a psychological as well as a conceptual and social aspect. Yet what starts the whole process is the need for change, something springing forth from the individual's volition.
In this sense, Ibsen is a powerful conceptual writer. This does not mean that his main concern as a dramatist was the didactical use of theater, or the waging of an abstract ideological debate. (Some of his critics, contemporary and later, have made this accusation - and it's fairly obvious that Ibsen was drawn towards the didactic.) However, the basis of Ibsen's human portrayal is his characters' conceptions of what makes life worth living - their values and their understanding of existence. The concepts they use to describe their position may be unclear; their self-understanding may be intuitive and deficient. A good example of this is Ellida Wangel's description of her ambivalent attraction to the sea in "The Lady from the Sea" (1888). But for a long time, in Ellida's consciousness, a desire has grown for a freer life coupled with a need for other moral and social values than those dominating Dr. Wangel's bourgeois existence. And this discovery within her creates shockwaves on the psychological and the social plane.
The Human Conflicts
Ibsen himself has given the best characteristic of his approach to drama. This was as early as 1857 in a theater review:
"It is not the conscious strife between ideas parading before us, nor is this the situation in real life. What we see are human conflicts, and enwrapped in these, deep inside, lay ideas at battle - being defeated, or charged with victory."
This undoubtedly touches upon something essential in Ibsen's demands to dramatic art: it should as realistically as possible unify three elements: the psychological, the ideological and the social. At its best, the organic synthesis of these three elements is at the heart of Ibsen's drama. Perhaps he only succeeds completely in a few of his plays, such as "Ghosts", "The Wild Duck", and "Hedda Gabler". Interestingly, he considered his major work to be "Emperor and Galilean" (1873), contrary to everyone else. This could indicate how much emphasis he put on ideology, not overt, but as a conflict between opposing views toward life. Ibsen believed that he had created a fully "realistic" rendering of the inner conflict in the abandoned Julian. The truth is, however, that Julian is too marked by the dramatist's own thoughts - what he calls his "positive philosophy of life." Ibsen first succeeded as a theatrical writer when he seriously took another approach - the one he described in connection with "Hedda Gabler" (1890):
"My main goal has been to depict people, human moods and human fates, on the basis of certain predominant social conditions and perceptions."
Ibsen took many years, after "Emperor and Galilean", to orient himself in this direction. Five years after that great historical dramatization of ideas came "Pillars of Society", the starting point for lbsen's reputation as a European theatrical writer.
Ibsen's International Breakthrough
In 1879, Ibsen sent Nora Helmer out into the world with a demand that a woman too must have the freedom to develop as an adult, independent, and responsible person. The playwright was now over 50, and had finally been recognized outside of the Nordic countries. "Pillars of Society". had admittedly opened the German borders for him, but it was "A Doll's House". and "Ghost" (1881) which in the 1880s led him into the European avant-garde.
"A Doll's House" has a plot which he repeated in many subsequent works, in the phase when he cultivated "critical realism". We experience the individual in opposition to the majority, society's oppressive authority. Nora puts it this way: "I will have to find out who is right, society or myself."
As noted earlier, when the individual intellectually frees himself from traditional ways of thinking, serious conflicts arise. For a short period around 1880, it appears that Ibsen was relatively optimistic about the individual's chances of succeeding on his own. Although her future is insecure in many ways, Nora seems to have a real chance of finding the freedom and independence she is seeking. Ibsen can be criticized for his somewhat superficial treatment of the problems a divorced woman without means would face in contemporary society. But it was the moral problems that concerned him as a writer, not the practical and economic ones.
A Singular Success
In spite of Nora's uncertain future prospects, she has served in a number of countries as a symbol for women fighting for liberation and equality. In this connection, she is the most "international" of lbsen's characters. Yet this is a rather singular success. The middle-class public has enthusiastically applauded a woman who leaves her children and husband, completely breaking off with the most important institution in the bourgeois society - the family!
This points to the basis of Ibsen's international success. He took deep schisms and acute problems that afflicted the bourgeois family and placed them on the stage. On the surface, the middle-class homes gave an impression of success - and appeared to reflect a picture of a healthy and stable society. But Ibsen dramatizes the hidden conflicts in this society by opening the doors to the private, and secret rooms of the bourgeois homes. He shows what can be hiding behind the beautiful façades: moral duplicity, confinement, betrayal, and fraud not to mention a constant insecurity. These were the aspects of the middle-class life one was not supposed to mention in public, as Pastor Manders wished Mrs. Alving to keep secret her reading and everything else that threatened the atmosphere at Rosenvold in "Ghosts". In the same manner, the social leaders in "Rosmersholm" put pressure on Rosmer to keep him from telling that he, the priest, had given up the Christian faith.
But Ibsen did not remain silent, and the spotlights of his plays made contemporary aspects of life highly visible. He disrupted the peace of the lives of the bourgeoisie by reminding them that they had climbed to their position of social power by mastering quite different ideals than tranquillity, order and stability. The bourgeoisie had betrayed its own motto of "freedom, equality, and brotherhood", and especially after the revolutionary year 1848 they had become defenders of the status quo. There was, of course, a liberal opposition within their class, and Ibsen openly joins these ranks in his first modern contemporary drama. He considered this movement for freedom and progress to be the true "European" point of view. As early as 1870, he wrote to the Danish critic Georg Brandes that it was imperative to return to the ideas of the French revolution, freedom, equality, and brotherhood. The words need a new meaning in keeping with the times, he claimed. In 1875 he writes, again to Brandes:
"Why are you, and the rest of us who hold the European viewpoint, so isolated at home?"
Eventually, as Ibsen grew older, he had trouble accepting certain extreme forms of liberalism which overemphasized the individual's sovereign right to self-realization and to some extent radically departed from past norms and values. In "Rosmersholm", he points out the dangers of radicalism built solely on individual moral norms. It is obvious here that Ibsen is concerned with European culture's basis in a Christian inspired moral tradition. One has to build on this, he indicates, even though one has given up the Christian faith. This is certainly the conclusion that Rebekka West reaches.
Simultaneously, this drama, like "Ghosts", is a painful clash with the melancholic, killjoy aspects of the Christian bourgeois tradition which subdues the human spirit. Both these works contain, for all their despair, a warm defense of happiness and the joy of life - pitted against the bourgeois society's emphasis on duty, law, and order.
It was in the 1870s that Ibsen oriented himself toward his "European" point of view. Even though he lived abroad, he continually chose a Norwegian setting for his contemporary dramas. As a rule, we find ourselves in a small Norwegian coastal town, the kind Ibsen knew so well from his childhood in Skien and his youth in Grimstad. The background of the young Ibsen certainly gave him a sharp eye for social forces and conflicts arising from differing viewpoints. In small societies, such as the typical Norwegian coastal town, these social and ideological conflicts are more exposed than they would be in a larger city.
Ibsen's first painful experiences came from such a small community. He had seen how conventions, traditions, and norms could exercise a negative control over the individual, create anxiety, and inhibit a natural and joyful lifestyle. This is the atmosphere of the "ghosts" as Mrs. Alving experiences it. According to her, it makes people "afraid of the light."
This was the atmosphere of his youth that formed the basis for his writing and world fame. As an insecure writer and man of the theater in a stifling Norwegian milieu, he set out to create a new Norwegian drama. He began with this national perspective. At the same time, from his first journey abroad, he oriented himself toward the European tradition of theater.
lbsen's Years of Learning
In the history of drama, early in the 1850s Ibsen carried on the traditions of two highly dissimilar writers, the Frenchman Eugéne Scribe (1791-1861) and the German Friedrich Hebbel (1813-63). For 11 years the young Ibsen was occupied with day to day practical stagework, and it follows that he had to keep himself well informed about the latest contemporary Euro-heatrical art. He worked with rehearsals of new plays and was committed to writing for the theater.
Scribe could teach him how a drama's plot should be structured in a logically motivated progression of scenes. Hebbel provided him with an example of the way drama could be based on life's contemporary dialectics, creating a modern conceptual drama. Hebbel's pioneering work was his conveyance of the ideologicalconflicts of his day into the theater where he created "a drama of issues" pointing forward. He also knew how the Greek tragedy's retrospective technique could be used by a modern dramatist.
In other words, Ibsen was in close contact with the art of the stage for a long uninterrupted period. His six years at the theater in Bergen (1851-57) and the following four or five years at the theater in Kristiania from 1857 were not easy. But he acquired a sharp eye for theatrical techniques and possibilities.
During a study tour to Copenhagen and Dresden in 1852, he came across a dramaturgical work newly released in Germany. It was Hermann Hettner's "Das moderne Drama" (1852). This programmatic treatise for a new topical theater deeply affected Ibsen's development as a dramatist. In Hettner too, we see the strong influence of Scribe and Hebbel, combined with a passionate interest for Shakespeare. Ibsen also gleaned knowledge from other writers, most notably Schiller and the two Danes Adam Oehlenschleger (1779-1850) and John Ludvig Heiberg (1791-1860).
Ibsen's apprenticeship was long, lasting about 15 years, and included theater work he later would claim to be as difficult as "having an abortion every day." There was a strong pressure to produce hanging over him; one that led to fumbling attempts in many directions. He experienced a few minor artistic victories - and numerous defeats. Very few believed that he had the necessary gift to become more than a minor theatrical writer with a modicum of talent.
In spite of this insecurity, it is a determined young writer we see during these years. His goal was clearly national. Together with his friend and colleague Bjornstjerne Bjornson (1832-1910), he founded "The Norwegian Company" in 1859, an organ for Norwegian art and culture. They had a joint program for their activities. Ibsen was especially concerned with the role of theater in the young Norwegian nation's search for its own identity In these "nation-building" pursuits, he gathered his material from the country's medieval history and perfected his art as a dramatist. This is prominent in the work that caps Ibsen's period of apprenticeship, "The Pretenders" from 1863. The story takes place in Norway in the 1200s, a period marked by destructive strife. But Ibsen's perspective is Norway of the 1860s when he has the king, Haakon Haakonsson, express his thoughts on national unity:
"Norway was a kingdom, now it will be a nation (... ) all shall be as one hereafter, and all shall know in themselves that they are one!"
"The Pretenders" was Ibsen's breakthrough, yet he had to wait a few years before being recognized as one of the country's leading writers. This honor came in 1866 with "Brand" "The Pretenders", constitutes the end of his close relationship with Norwegian theater. It was also his farewell performance - he now started his long exile. In the years that followed, he turned away from the stage and sought a reading public.
The Great Topical Dramas
Both the great dramas for reading, "Brand" (1866) and "Peer Gynt" (1867), were based on Ibsen's problematic relationship with his country of birth. Political developments in 1864 led him to lose his optimistic belief in his country's future. He even began to doubt whether his countrymen had a historical raison d'être as a nation.
What he had earlier treated as a national problem of identity now became a question of the individual's personal integrity. It was no longer sufficient to dwell on an earlier historical era of greatness and focus on the continuity of the nation's life. Ibsen turned away from history, and confronted what he considered the main contemporary problem - a nation can only rise up culturally by means of the individual's exertion of will. "Brand" is mainly a drama with a message that the individual must follow the path of volition in order to achieve true humanity In addition, this is the only way to real freedom - for the individual, and it follows, for society as a whole.
In the two rather different twin works "Brand" and "Peer Gynt", the focus is on the problem of personality, Ibsen dramatizes the conflict between an opportunistic acting out of an unnatural role, and a dedication to a demanding lifelong quest. In "Peer Gynt", the dramatist created a scene which artistically illustrates this situation of conflict. The aging Peer, on his way back to his Norwegian roots is forced to come to terms with himself. As he looks back upon his wasted life, he peels an onion. He lets each layer represent a different role he has played. But he finds no core. He has to face the fact that he has become "no one", that he has no "self".
"So unspeakably poor, then, a soul can go back to nothingness, in the misty gray. You beautiful earth, don't be annoyed that I left no sign when I walked your grass. You beautiful sun, in vain you've shed your glorious light on an empty house. There was no one within to cheer and warm; - The owner, they tell me, was never at home."
Peer is the weak, spineless person - Brand's antithesis. But it is precisely in Ibsen's living portrayal of a personality's "dissolution" in changing roles, that some historians of the theater see the harbinger of a modernistic perception of the individual. The British drama researcher Ronald Gaskell puts it this way: "Peer Gynt" inaugurates the drama of the modern mind", and he continues: "Indeed, if Surrealism and Expressionism in the theater can be said to have any single source, the source is undoubtedly "Peer Gynt".
Thus does this early Ibsen drama though very "Norwegian" and romantic claim a central position in theatrical history, even though it was not written for the stage. In fact, it is "Peer Gynt" that in modern times has helped Ibsen to retain his position as a vital and relevant writer. Thus it was not only his contemporary plays that have made him one of the most towering figures in the history of the theater. Although it was mainly these works the well-known Swedish researcher in drama, Martin Lamm, had in mind when he claimed:
"Ibsen's drama is the Rome of modern drama: all roads lead to it - and from it."
Even though Ibsen withdrew from his Norwegian starting point in the 1870s and became "a European," he was always deeply marked by the country he left in 1864, and to which he first returned as an aging celebrity. It was not easy for him to return. The many years abroad, and the long struggle for recognition, had left their indelible stamp. Towards the end of his career, he said that he really was not happy with the fantastic life he had lived. He felt homeless - even in his mother country.
But it is precisely this tension between the Norwegian and the foreign (an element of freer European culture) in Ibsen that characterized him more than anything else as an individual and a writer. His independent position in what he called "the great, free, cultural situation" provided him with the broad perspective of distance, and freedom. Simultaneously, the Norwegian in him created a longing for a more liberated and happier life. This is the longing for the sun in the grave writer's poetic world. He never denied his distinctive Norwegian character. Toward the end of his life, he said to a German friend:
He who wishes to understand me, must know Norway. The magnificent, but severe, natural environment surrounding people up there in the north, the lonely, secluded life - the farms are miles apart - forces them to be unconcerned with others, to keep to their own. That is why they become introspective and serious, they brood and doubt - and they often lose faith. At home every other person is a philosopher! There, the long, dark, winters come with their thick fogs enveloping the houses - oh, how they long for the sun!
Ibsen dedicated his life to creating his screenwrights and other literary pieces of work. He used himself as an experiment to understand the concept of human struggle and reflect such in so realistic a manner that forever famed him in not only the literary world, but the psychological world as well.
ReplyDeleteBorn and raised in Norway, Ibsen grew up in small towns as is often the settings of his plays. He spent 15 years as an apprentice at a theatre company, learning the tricks and trade of other playwrights to understand the process of writing. Eventually, after countless hours spent learning, trying, failing more often than not, it was obvious he could no longer progress any further as a playwright. He soon escaped to explore Europe and go beyond the small confines that limited the expanse of his art. In doing so, created for himself an “independent position in what he called "the great, free, cultural situation" provid[ing] him with the broad perspective of distance and freedom.” So he left behind the life he knew, the ones he came to know and love, all in sacrifice of his art. From growing in a life where struggle could be observed openly and in abundance, traveling all over Europe to learn the commonalities of human strife, and experiencing first hand humanity's struggle to understand need v.s. want, Ibsen created his plays.
And with this broad range of first hand experience, his work grew to attain tremendous prosperity. He was praised for creating masterpieces so thought through in their structure, so simple yet so brilliant in its ability to express the human truths that many find themselves unable to name or explain, praised not only by playwrights and literary critics alike, but psychologists as well. Psychologists found themselves enraptured in Ibsen’s work with his ability to create multidimensional characters so realistic as to be able to study, examine, and learn from them in terms of a psychological standpoint, due to its “account of human life from an acute social and conceptual perspective.” What made the plays entertaining and emotionally invoking also allowed them to be of use in unexpected ways that would change the course of history and advance our understanding of the human mind and tendencies.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed learning about Ibsen and the way he took his life into his plays. It seemed as if he had no filter, even when using different names in his plays and pieces of literature, he continued to use his life as a plot, not directly, no matter what was going on. Most of his writing was about his self conflicts, psychologically, mentally, and socially which really allowed for his audience to understand how he really felt and what he went through throughout his life. I liked how he used his life as a model for his literature because I also think it speaks to the audience and can allow for them to relate to him in a different way than other writers. He used his plays to express what was happening around him which could inspire others to do the same. He also incorporated many lessons to his readers for them to take away, one in particular which I liked being, in “A Doll’s House” I believe when he showed readers that a single woman can leave her husband and kids to become this singular success. There were many critics but it showed people a new lifestyle, especially in Ibsen's time. He claimed that Nora “served in a number of countries as a symbol for women fighting for liberation and equality” and “is the most "international" of lbsen's characters” which I think shows a lot to his audience as well. Although his characters were not a direct representation of himself, they sure did show some of his morals and thoughts which we can all see throughout his writings. In one of his pieces, “When We Dead Awaken”, one of the characters says, “‘For I was born to be an artist, you see. - And, do what I may, I shall never be anything else.’" I really love this quote as well because I think it serves as how Ibsen stood with his writing. Although it was difficult for him at times, and through his other writings we were able to see that it took him away from loved ones at times, he knows he was meant to write and that is what he was going to do - for himself. I am excited to read one of his plays fully and see what it is like to understand Ibsen completely!
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ReplyDeleteGibson's life impacted his play undoubtedly due to how his life experiences changed his values and morals. Ibsin didn't have a marvelous life with huge moments rather he had a very humble life that started with poverty before his work made him an international celebrity. He had suffered a lot in his life and did not have a cakewalk to be the successful playwright he eventually came. These trials and tribulations helped Ibsin develop such profound thinking and understanding that are evident in so many of his works.
ReplyDeleteIbsin changed modern drama in the sense that he started to go against what popular norm was. What I mean by this is that instead of writing plays that fit in with all the other plays made at the time, his plays stuck out like a sore thumb. His plays emphasized what he wanted to critic about society at the time. One of his more controversial plays required a change to the ending before the play even finished. These plays that attacked the audience and public were so controversial that sometimes they even made the audience feel guilty.
One of my favorite quotes was "I am an artist, Irene, and I take no shame to myself for the frailties that perhaps cling to me. For I was born to be an artist, you see. - And, do what I may, I shall never be anything else." This due to how it speaks to how Ibsin never chose to crack under societies pressure to make more culturally fitting plays. He defined himself as an artist, and as such he didn't want to fit any expectations and chose to do what he felt was right.
When I was in Colorado over break, my two cousins and I got pretty sick of skiing after a few hours. Every afternoon, we would take the bus downtown and head straight for this little house-looking building set a little bit back from the main street. It was “Rumors Cafe and Bookstore” There we would browse the books for hours while sipping our matcha lattes. After a few days of scanning the shelves for the perfect book to purchase with the money I had gotten for Christmas, I decided on “The Best American Short Stories of 2018”. There were plenty of books on activism and politics which I was yearning to read but I realized I hadn't read plain old fiction in a while and I am ashamed to admit I think I wanted a break from the upsetting setbacks that I feel the country is facing. However, when I read the introduction to the book, the editor of the collection stated that “I am not avoiding reality when I read fiction: I am strengthening my ability to cope.” She also reiterated Orson Wells’ sentiment that “The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.” I realized the editor, as a gay, black women, she had very little choice to avoid politics and that it was my privallege that allowed me to temporarily seperate myself from the issues of the country. She describes the collection as “engaging with the political, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, always brilliantly and creatively.” Ok, getting back to Ibsen, reading his background information reminded me heavily of this sentiment, that life, and therefore art, can never really be separated from politics or social analysis. It was mentioned that he faced some early criticism from aesthetics who believed his art should leave alone such things as “ethical gravity” and “social significance”, when in reality, that is impossible, that leaving out these issues would also be a definitive statement. Ibsen’s life as an artist was often portrayed in his work as his characters tried to find balance between their life as an artist and their life. Although these works may not have been autobiographical, they at least point to a dilemma in Isben’s mind. In his play, “When We Dead Awaken” Rubek says, "I am an artist, Irene, and I take no shame to myself for the frailties that perhaps cling to me. For I was born to be an artist, you see. - And, do what I may, I shall never be anything else." I think many professionals struggle with finding the balance between two things they feel must be done, their craft and themselves. Over break, I read “The Education of an Idealist” by Samantha Power, who was Obama’s UN ambassador. As a self described idealist, she feels she has a purpose in life she must abide to, yet things are not so black and white when she gains a family and feels a pull towards them too. This introspection makes me think that the play will delve more into personally responsibility while the last play, “The Importance of Being Earnest” was more of a satirical social commentary. I’m excited to read!
ReplyDeleteThe title and quote “When We Dead Awaken” confused me for a while as I read this. I figured out that I was reading it incorrectly, seeing ‘dead’ as the adjective that describes awaken, as if they were awakening in a dead way. Finally I got it, When We [The Dead] Awaken. And so I was struck by it, just intrigued, especially with the two paragraphs in the reading about When We Dead Awaken. It sounds like such a devastating play, devastating to the audience as they can see pieces of themselves in the main character - unfulfilled with their lives and never reaching the happiness they could’ve. This type of self evaluation is, from what I can tell from the reading, apparent in all of his works. That’s what he did: he thrust the hidden, ugly parts of your reality onto the stage for all to see, the parts that you usually try your best never to even acknowledge. Which is what makes his work a little risky. It must be entertaining and well written - as he studied playwriting for a long time before writing his own and gaining international success. But, reality can be scary and therefore something that critics might not appreciate. It surprises me that he got such success instantly. I would’ve thought he would end up like Oscar Wilde, doing well but really succeeding after his death. I haven’t read his pieces yet, obviously, but such charged plays must have their fair share of protest. But overall, I am excited to explore "Ghosts" and whatever else we read.
ReplyDeleteHenrik Ibsen’s life was full of poverty and bad family dynamics. These are two themes that often arise in his plays and poems. His life experience was very clearly shown throughout various works. For example, most of his plays are set in small towns, much like the one that he grew up in. His first work, Catiline, was written because he had to study for a latin exam and most of the plot was based off of what he was studying.
ReplyDeleteOne quote from the article stood out to me in particular. “My main goal has been to depict people, human moods, and human fates, on the basis of certain predominant social conditions and perceptions.” I think that this explains the modernism that is demonstrated in many of Ibsen’s plays. He tried to capture people from his own life and write about them as they really were. His tragedies are so realistic and contemporary to his times. He portrays people from the middle class of his days who are blindly following their routines when suddenly they are confronted with a deep crisis, and they can only blame themselves for it. The article also explains how Ibsen’s plays realistically unify three elements: the psychological, the ideological and the social. I think that the quote above showed how he could naturally combine the three of those elements, which made his plays seem realistic and contemporary.
Ibsen’s life impacted his plays in a large way. The subjects that he chose to dissect in the dramas were based on his experiences as a child and as an adult. His time spent in apprenticeship and the plays he saw served as a base for him to use in terms of techniques and potential that he could access. He first drew from his experience growing up in Norway to write plays examining the problems with the country. He himself said that “He who wishes to understand me, must know Norway”. Later on, after he had left Norway and was traveling abroad, the subject and topics of his plays changed. He did his best to expose the bourgeoisie tendencies to the public, showing them for who they really were: full of hidden conflict. He expressed many ideas such as the nature of the artist and the individual opposing society.
ReplyDeleteHis plays changed modern drama in many ways, with the most important being that “it should as realistically as possible unify three elements: the psychological, the ideological and the social”. His plays were relatable to audiences because they were so close to reality, but they still carried an important “universal truth” type of element like the plays written by Shakespeare. This means that the message got through and stuck with people. He started a new trend of “Realism” plays.
"It is not the conscious strife between ideas parading before us, nor is this the situation in real life. What we see are human conflicts, and enwrapped in these, deep inside, lay ideas at battle - being defeated, or charged with victory."
This quote is important as it states the whole idea behind Ibsen’s methodology. His goal is to put these ideas at odds with each other inside of a realistic setting in order to convey them to the public in a way that they previously have not been conveyed. This is important to both Ibsen and the reader as it sets the standard for what his plays achieve, and how they do it. This is where his influence in modern drama can be seen most.
Ibsens life was a tragedy within itself. His family was poor when he was younger, and to help out he quit his schooling to work. Usually, when someone who has a past as rough as him, they use their art to vent that frustration and cope with the things that have happened to them. His life has caused him to not have a filter, and made him want to shed light on things that bother people, having a place where these tragedies live, so we can keep them at bay and deal with them when need be. Ibsen changed modern drama by making it feel real to the audience. By talking about things such as family dynamics, it really connects with the reader. They can relate to it because everyone has a family of some sort, wether its good or bad, its real and personal. A quote from Ibsen that really resonated with me is, “For I was born to be an artist, you see. - And, do what I may, I shall never be anything else." For the obvious reasons, I love art and want to be an artist, but the part that feels so personal to me is that I’ve always felt that art was my path in life. I have always been drawn to an artistic lifestyle, wanting to create and admire art. All artists have the same ways of thinking, its almost as if we think in layers. We have a single idea, its broad and lacks detail. The more we focus on that idea, the more detail comes with it and the more refined and focused it becomes. There isn’t one path or one way of doing things, and its okay to scratch an idea and start over, its all in the process. I relate to Ibsen in a lot of ways. We both come from Norwegian decent. Even though my life lacks the Scandinavian culture, the older I get the more I want to touch that side of my life. So I am very excited to read his work to study some Norwegian literature. We also like our ideas to be realistic, even if they are dark and maybe tragic at times. But its these deep rooted ideas that resonate with the audience.
ReplyDeleteThe most common thread in the ideas of the article was how change, or straying from what is normal, leads to conflict. This is bluntly expressed when the article states, “when the individual intellectually frees himself from traditional ways of thinking, serious conflicts arise.” But, it is important to understand how such an idea ties together society and human nature. Ibsen says, “It is not the conscious strife between ideas parading before us, nor is this the situation in real life. What we see are human conflicts, and enwrapped in these, deep inside, lay ideas at battle - being defeated, or charged with victory,” which appears as if it’s inherent in humans to constantly strife, causing such conflict to arise in the society we created. But, Ibsen also believes that the way of society can be broken which is shown through some of his plays, as it is said in the article, “‘Brand’ is mainly a drama with a message that the individual must follow the path of volition in order to achieve true humanity.” The phrase “violation of order” could very well mean the deception of rules and regulation, but potentially the violation of human nature, in that what makes us different causes us to fight. Do we have to fall short of our capacity to live and love just because it appears to be the only end in human psychology? Ibsen looks at how family functions because it may be that it is the same way society functions, or possibly not. He looked at how we behave to reason for how “we” behave. It says that “he had seen how conventions, traditions, and norms could exercise a negative control over the individual, create anxiety, and inhibit a natural and joyful lifestyle.” Hating people in the present time for their race or sexual orientation just because of the “conventions, traditions, and norms” presented in The Bible shows how people are stubborn when it comes to change. When you look at how students at AHS reacted to the new schedule, it makes you wonder as to how our own perceptions may be stubborn.
ReplyDeleteWhat Ibsen is talking about in his plays seems to be like most things families experience. I feel like all families have that secret or that aspect that they ignore or pretend isn't happening because of society and the eyes of outsiders. And we all do things that we don't talk about or even notice sometimes because these things are so little and weird that sometimes it feels like it isn't worth mentioning. But when we notice and talk about it, like Ibsen does in his plays, we realize the implications of these little small things. Like we were talking about in last class, about the "ghosts" of how you were raised and how that lingers on you. For instance, I have a specific name I call my brother and he has a specific way he calls me, but neither of us call each other by our first names. One day, my grandpa sat us down and said we should start calling each other by our first names, because people might think it's weird. And in the back of my mind I did know "if I want to blend in more and be normal I should call him by his first name" but it's like when Gogol didn't want to be called Nikhil in kindergarten. If my brother didn't call me how he does and if I didn't call him as I do, it would be weird. "What we see are human conflicts, and enwrapped in these, deep inside, lay ideas at battle - being defeated, or charged with victory." How I view this sentiment by Ibsen is the conflict we all have in changing what we do to fit some norm.
ReplyDeleteGrowing up in a small Norwegian town, Ibsen would’ve had a lot of time to observe human nature, especially in the middle class or bourgeoisie which most of his stories revolve around. Also, his last play especially, “When We Dead Awaken” which was written as his illness was becoming more serious became the “epilogue of his life's work”. It reflects the life of an artist, which many argue is not a self portrait but only a critique on art. His works were influential on the ways it could be connected to real human psychology regarding the motives and conflicts the characters faced.
ReplyDelete"My main goal has been to depict people, human moods and human fates, on the basis of certain predominant social conditions and perceptions."
This quote depicts Ibsen’s goals in writing his plays. He could see society and the ways it could confine or define and the way people chose to embrace or rebel against that. For example, in “When We Dead Awaken” the artist forsake most human moods by giving up the love of his life and friends for his art.
"I will have to find out who is right, society or myself."
This quote is another example of how he achieved his goal in portraying the struggle between humanity versus society. This quote is from “The Dollhouse” in which Nora faces this predicament.
I believe that the authenticity of Ibsen’s plays allowed his plays become popular. By referencing his life and what was going on in his mind, Henrik Ibsen was able to relate to the “average” person. It was through this process that allowed him to comment on social norms. For example, in his play “A Singular Success,” Ibsen introduces a character Nora who travels to other countries to fight for freedom and equality. Though this idea may be far-fetched at the time, by blending in the fact that Nora is middle-class, Nora “completely breaking off with the most important institution in the bourgeois society - the family” is not seen as outrageous (Ibsen).
ReplyDeleteI think that by focusing on realism, Ibsen changed modern drama. People do not want to hear about the rich, they want to hear about their own class. Ibsen realized this and started writing plays about people in the middle class. This combined with Ibsen’s unique focus allowed him to gain popularity, and, soon, other play writers began to follow.
But it was not just the fact on capitalizing on the middle class that made Ibsen focus his work on this class. For most of his life, Ibsen was stuck in this class, growing up from “a hard road from poverty.” His experiences also made him write about this class.
Throughout Ibsen’s career, he faced a lot of opposition and never felt as though he was accepted and had a place of belonging. He spent most of his life abroad and was never treated as if he was one of them and when he did return to his birthplace and was completely unfamiliar and had no feeling of a home. Ibsen’s dramas circulate around the idea of doing your own thing and falling out of societal normalcies. Straying away from the expectations of society, Ibsen created storylines of characters with intimate conflicts, bringing attention to issues that feel very relatable to the audience. Instead of blocking the hardships and life and portraying the “best” life Ibsen brings the audience into reality, "My main goal has been to depict people, human moods and human fates, on the basis of certain predominant social conditions and perceptions." Within his works, Ibsen really highlights the importance of fighting and acknowledging the problems, and it becomes a challenge of strength whether you choose to confront them or let them take over. He brings to light the question of satisfaction, ‘Is this the life you want?’,“It is not the conscious strife between ideas parading before us, nor is this the situation in real life. What we see are human conflicts, and enwrapped in these, deep inside, lay ideas at battle - being defeated, or charged with a victory." Through life you must decide how to face obstacles and think about the consequences of your actions, life is unpredictable and the unknown is vast.
ReplyDeleteIsben's work has many allusions to how he grew up. His childhood was not great, he faced a lot of struggles with poverty. This opposition made it difficult to find a place of belonging throughout his life. This definitely sparked his outlook that drove his work- one quote that very simply describes this is “My main goal has been to depict people, human moods, and human fates, on the basis of certain predominant social conditions and perceptions.” He has an interesting view on the way things are. He's dealt with adversity and that is what makes his perspective on the world so enriching. He is someone who seems to be on the outskirts of society. He knows that differences often cause conflicts, but that is also what adds texture to everyday life. He thinks it is very important to understand one's problems because it is in doing that that one will progress in life. By confronting the things that scare you, you can move towards a life that you really desire. He sees life as a series of road blocks and the choices you make surrounding that are what define it
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ReplyDeleteHenrik Ibsen’s tragic life most definitely impacted his screenwriting. He had feelings of being unfulfilled because of a stifling childhood in a small norwegian town. He eventually moved to Europe and didn’t move back to Norway for over thirty years. This left him feeling “homeless”, not feeling like he truly belonged in Norway or in Europe. Having experienced some drama in his life, he used it to give his plays “the special character.” He had characters that reflected a lot of strong, controversial views that matched Ibsen’s own moral stances. These he developed by moving up in social classes and living in multiple countries. Some of his plays such as “When we dead awaken” came about from his own shortcomings and emotions and how they affected him. Henrik Ibsen shaped modern theatre by writing plays that bewildered his audience with unaddressed societal issues. For instance his play “A Doll’s House” is a nod to the women’s rights movement and tries to promote change for this societal norm. Even though it was extremely popular and well renowned, the ending had to be changed because it was too controversial. Society was able to take some of his criticisms, as they saw the truth and art in it, but only to a point. However, Ibsen wasn’t in all ways radical in his views. He actually saw radical liberalism as dangerous. So, it can make sense that his writing wasn’t completely pushed aside as radical when it first came out, but obviously there was still backlash.
Henrik Ibsen was so dedicated to his work that it became entirely who he was. This reminds me of a quote from Annie Dillard’s Death of a Moth. She says that being a writer means “you can’t be anything else.” Henrik Ibsen was a writer who dedicated his life to his work. He spent his whole life trying to reveal truths about society and the inner conflicts of people. Writing just one play was never enough for him. He had to write more and go deeper into the ideas he was writing about. I find it interesting how he always had to go one step further with his work. His goal was never to please people, but to explore the inner conflicts of people and how they affect you. Ibsen brought to drama “an ethical gravity, a psychological depth, and a social significance which the theater had lacked since the days of Shakespeare.” This did not always please people. In fact, he upset so many people with one of his plays that he was forced to change the ending in order to keep producing it.
ReplyDeleteI also found it interesting how Ibsen repeatedly created characters who sacrifice themselves and others for their work and success. Ibsen’s dramas have the characteristic of “the experience of missing out on life and plodding along in a state of living death.” I think this reveals a lot about how Ibsen lived his live and how he could never be anything but a writer. He sacrificed everything else in his life for his work, which is why he wrote about so many characters doing the same.
Apologies for the late post!
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in 7th grade, my English teacher spent the entire year trying to pound into our heads that the best writing comes from what is real. At the time, I preferred books about dragons and magic, and was unable to see how this could be true. While I may still prefer the fantasy genre, I can also now recognize the importance of literature with nonfiction origins. This is particularly prominent in the work of Ibsen, though not in the way my very literal 7th grade self would have expected. Ibsen’s characters are not biographical, and nor do they represent actual people in his life. He does not write of his own life, but rather, Ibsen writes about the plight of the middle class, something he’d known of since childhood. Born and raised in a small Norweigian town, Ibsen knew well how the environment fostered gossip and secrets. It is said that “He shows what can be hiding behind the beautiful façades: moral duplicity, confinement, betrayal, and fraud not to mention a constant insecurity,” a fenomena he knew well because it dominated the lives of everyone in the town he grew up in. I think that it is because of the private fears and insecurities he broadcasted on stage that Ibsen has any prominence in today’s world at all. In the modern day, middle class people still struggle with outward appearances (trying not to look too “poor,” especially in a town like Andover). Family problems still exist, and while divorce is more common now, there are still many unhappy couples out there trying to look outwardly happy. Ibsen saw and recognized these issues over a hundred years ago, and he showed the world exactly why these were problems, making drama all the more relevant to his day’s world and ours.
Often in literature, characters appear to be one-sided or simplistic, not accurate representations of humans. Ibsen takes a 360-approach to this idea by using characters to explain complex human phenomenon. He says, “My main goal has been to depict people, human moods and human fates, on the basis of certain predominant social conditions and perceptions.” This desire to illustrate true human condition can be connected to his early life and personal struggles. He speaks of sacrificing much of his life for his art and copes with the results of that. One line that particularly struck me is “it is first when we dead awaken, that we see what is irremediable that we have never really lived.” This took me a while to break down in order to understand but the message is truly striking and connects with much of what I have been feeling this year. As a senior awaiting one of the biggest life changes I have faced so far, I have learned that it is okay to simply live. For years, my main focus was school and college constantly concerned that I wasn’t doing enough. With the realization that in a few short months I will have to leave the only things I have known for years, I have allowed myself to live to be happy for myself now not for others or for myself in the future. Ibsen explains exactly what I work to achieve today: happiness in the present. Looking to the past or the future means not living now, which is a concept that has taken me my whole young adult life to understand. I respect Ibsen greatly for his courage to expose such important concepts that may be difficult for people to hear. He used drama to disguise these hard pills to swallow which is a genius arrangement that set precedent for future playwrights.
ReplyDeleteI find his desire to be viewed as an artist interesting. "I am an artist, Irene, and I take no shame to myself for the frailties that perhaps cling to me. For I was born to be an artist, you see. - And, do what I may, I shall never be anything else." He views himself as an artist, as his work consumes his life. His work reflects the events in his life, as well as his own thoughts and feelings. He lives to create his pieces. He so thoroughly embodies the writer in himself that “everything has been sacrificed for his art.” This is very rare for someone to do. Many people keep writing or art as a passion in their lives, yet it remains off to the side, never taking the spotlight. For someone to make it their main focus in life shows purpose beyond their own personal satisfactions. He spent a good portion of his life, 27 years, living in Germany and Italy, giving him different experiences and inspiration for his work. For him to remain so focused on his goal, even through poverty, shows immense dedication and determination. He gained popularity for his controversial topics he wrote about, like women being able to “develop as an adult, independent, and responsible person.” This is something that even today is not super common to find literature about. Most movies and books involve a woman relying on a love interest, yet that is not necessary as he proves.
ReplyDeleteIntroducing Norway to the literature world, Ibsen is doubtless the most prominent writer in the country’s history. But his feelings towards his home country are often convoluted, leaving his nation for a long period of time as a young man, it seemed that Ibsen longed for its maternal care while fearing its overly isolated reality. These contradicting themes followed the impressively prolific author throughout his works. In "When We Dead Awaken" the author portrays the life and dilemmas of Rubek, a man who has renounced his happiness in order to become an artist, claiming that he "was born to be an artist” and “shall never be anything else." His commitment to his work, although said to be non-autobiographical closely related to Ibsen, for it seems that the Norweigen longed for nothing more than a pen to satisfy his need for art. The play does however, greatly criticize Rubek. Vocalized through Irene, an old lover, these feelings of artistic superficiality are considered by her to be the sculptor's need to deny his own humanity and manufacture a fictitious world, perhaps in hopes that this one would bring him happiness.
ReplyDeleteIbsen worked to break many barriers, shocking the public with his controversial views he often added his own opinions to his pieces. One of his most famous works “A Doll’s House” went so far as to get censored, forcing the author to change the society-defying ending to a more socially acceptable one. His works are still revered to this day, as a way to portray the way drama has shifted from thoughtless depictions to thought provoking ones. Ibsen once said: "My main goal has been to depict people, human moods and human fates, on the basis of certain predominant social conditions and perceptions." it is clear that he did indeed intend to do so, and was largely successful with it.