pr 
 
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 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT 
 FUND GIVEN IN 1 89 1 BY 
 
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Ag 1 3 '37 , 
 
 MAYOO lOSJng - 
 
 Cornell University Library 
 PT 8890.J22H5 1890 
 
 Life of Henrik Ibsen / 
 
 3 1924 026 308 811 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924026308811 
 
Mr. Heinemann has made arrangements with 
 Mr. Gosse, to whom Dr. Ibsen has given the entire 
 English and American rights in the new Drama 
 he is about to issue, in consequence of which an 
 English version of that work will be published by 
 Mr. Heinemann in London on the day that the 
 original appears in Copenhagen. 
 
THE 
 
 LIFE OF HENRIK IBSEN. 
 
THE 
 
 LIFE OF HENRIK IBSEN. 
 
 HENRIK J^GER. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY CLARA BELL. 
 
 WITH THE VERSE DONE INTO ENGLISH FROM THE NORWEGIAN 
 ORIGINAL BY 
 
 E D M U N D , G O S S E. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 WILLIAM HEINEMANN. 
 1890. 
 
 {All rights restrveJ.'] 
 
 T 
 
-/7/ 
 
 "i. 
 
 '£~— 7t-"|-«i^ 
 
 BAIXANTYNE. HANSON AND CO 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
 6M 
 
TO 
 
 MADAME SUSANNAH IBSEN 
 
 {.nee THORESEN), 
 
 FROM THE AUTHOR. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The Life of the famous Norwegian poet which is 
 here presented to the English public was issued in 
 Copenhagen, on his sixtieth birthday, March 20, 
 1888, under the 'a'Ci&^Henrik Ibsen: 1 828-1 888. 
 Et litercert Livsbillede. It is the only existing 
 biography of Henrik Ibsen which has any pre- 
 tension to being authoritative, and it has the 
 advantage of not merely being published with 
 the poet's sanction, but of being enriched by a 
 great number of notes and documents supplied by 
 Ibsen himself. 
 
 The numerous poetical quotations from Ibsen's 
 lyrical writings have been specially translated by 
 Mr. Gosse for this edition, with scrupulous attention 
 to the form and substance alike of the original. 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 and in almost every instance they may be taken 
 as reproducing the exact external appearance of the 
 passages they imitate. 
 
 An Index and a few notes have been added for 
 the convenience of the English reader. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 PREFACE ... vii 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CHILDHOOD — EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS . . . I 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA ... 53 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA . . 99 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY .... . I38 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 REST AND RETROSPECTION . . . 180 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 DRAMAS OF THE DAY . . . 
 
 203 
 
 INDEX .248 
 
THE LIFE OF HENRIK IBSEN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CHILDHOOD— EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. 
 
 In 1720 or thereabouts a Danish ship's-captain 
 named Peter Ibsen came from Moen to Bergen, 
 where he was admitted to the freedom of the city, 
 and married the daughter of a German who had 
 settled there. He was the great-great-grandfather 
 of Henrik Ibsen. 
 
 Ibsen's grandfather, who was also a captain, was 
 Henrik Petersen Ibsen. He married Wenche Dis- 
 chington, the daughter of a naturalised Scotsman, 
 and died within a year of his marriage. His widow 
 subsequently married Provost Von der Lippe at 
 Solum, near Skien, and this tied her branch of the 
 Ibsen family to that town. She had one son by 
 her first marriage, who was born after his father's 
 death, and named after him. 
 
 Henrik Ibsen the second married the daughter of 
 one Plesner, a merchant at Skien. Plesner and his 
 wife were both of German descent. But this union, 
 
2 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 too, was but brief. Henrik Ibsen had chosen to 
 follow the calling of his father and grandfather, and 
 the vessel of which he was both owner and captain 
 was lost with all hands on Hesnaes, near Grim- 
 stad ; the very spot where the scene of Terje Viken 
 is laid. 
 
 Only some fragments of the wreck with the name 
 of the ship drifted to land to tell the tale of woe. 
 A year later the widow married a seaman named 
 Ole Pans, by whom she had five children. Her 
 son by her first marriage was named Knud (or 
 Canute), and became the father of the poet. 
 
 His mother's name was Maria Cornelia Alten- 
 burg ; she was the daughter of a wealthy merchant 
 of Skien, who, as was customary in those days, 
 had begun life as a ship's-captain. He too was 
 of German descent. 
 
 In each of these four generations the Danish 
 seaman's blood had mingled with a foreign strain, 
 German, Scotch, German, and again German. Even 
 in these perhaps some infusion of Norwegian ele- 
 ments might be discovered, if the pedigrees of the 
 mothers were investigated ; but not a drop of Nor- 
 wegian blood had, by direct descent, any part in 
 I the composition of Henrik Ibsen's temperament, 
 1 which nevertheless has been styled " peculiarly Nor- 
 wegian." 
 
 This ancestry throws hght on his nature ; it helps 
 to explain his isolation and his cosmopolitan spirit ■ 
 it accounts for his being able to detach himself so 
 
EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. 3 
 
 completely from his native land, and spend more 
 than twenty years in voluntary exile. 
 
 It also suggests the source of certain deeper- 
 lying characteristics. The puritanism and idealism 
 of the Scotch, which have played so important a 
 part in the history of their country and set their 
 mark on its philosophy, irresistibly recur to our 
 minds when we study the man whose demands on 
 Man are as inexorable as only those of an idealist 
 can be, while his view of life is as gloomy as that 
 of any puritan. The German element — German 
 proclivity to speculative fancies — German delight in 
 pure abstractions, and instinctive preference for 
 strictly logical and systematic thought — are these 
 not to be seen in Henrik Ibsen's individuality, and 
 have they not had their influence on the develop- 
 ment of the faculties of his soul ? 
 
 And if we inquire yet further from whom he de- 
 rived his intellectual peculiarities, we find that we 
 must refer them to women, whose influence has evi- 
 dently been preponderant. His grandmother must 
 have been a highly-educated woman, by the standard 
 of her day. She took an eager interest in all the 
 niovements of her time. Her character was stern 
 and grave, and she seems to have been sincerely 
 pious, which then, in the circle she moved in, was 
 by no means common. It is recorded by the children 
 of her second marriage that, with rare exceptions, 
 she was conspicuous for a reserve and taciturnity 
 which made it difficult to approach her. 
 
4 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 His mother's, too, was one of those reserved 
 natures which find it hard to be communicative. 
 This reticence in later years developed into shyness, 
 which all her children inherited in a greater or less 
 degree. Ibsen's sister describes her, in a letter to 
 the Norwegian author of this book in the following 
 terms : ^ — " She was a silent, amiable woman, the 
 soul of the house as regarded both her husband 
 and her children. She always sacrificed herself. 
 Bitterness and fault - finding were unknown to 
 her." 
 
 The temperament of the men of the family was 
 of a brighter hue. The grandfather seems to have 
 been a clear-headed man, with many eager interests. 
 He had a pleasant humour, and we are told that 
 he was always devising sports and pastimes. The 
 poet's father had inherited both his mother's severity 
 and his father's liveliness. They combined in him 
 in a keen wit. He was by nature pleasure-loving 
 and sociable, with a fine understanding and ever- 
 ready wit, which made him loved, though also 
 feared, by his family and neighbours, for his jests 
 were not always of the gentlest ; he could be very 
 biting and unsparing in his utterances about those 
 who had in any way aroused his displeasure. It 
 was evidently from him that the son inherited the 
 germ of the peculiar talent which led him to write 
 
 1 This shyness would seem to have come into the family from the 
 Pans connection. Old Mrs. Altenburg, Ibsen's maternal grandmother, 
 was sister of Ole Paus, his paternal grandmother's second husband ; 
 and the children of that marriage were equally reserved. 
 
EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. 5 
 
 Kcerlighedens Komedie (The Comedy of Love) and 
 De Unges Forbund (The Young Men's League). 
 
 Under these conditions of ancestral tendencies, 
 Henrik Ibsen was born at Skien, on the 20th of 
 March 1828, the eldest child of his parents. 
 
 Skien was then, as it is still, a homely little town 
 of wooden houses, containing scarcely 3000 inhabi- 
 tants. But small as it was, it was the scene of much 
 busy life and a not unimportant centre of trade ; and 
 Knud Ibsen, conducting an extensive and varied 
 business, lived in the heart of the town. 
 
 Referring to his earliest impressions, Ibsen has 
 written the following notes and has placed them at 
 the author's disposal : — 
 
 "When the streets of my native town of Skien 
 were named — or perhaps only re-named — some years 
 since, the authorities did me the honour of calling 
 one after me. So at least I learned from the news- 
 papers, and I have heard it since from travellers. 
 By their description this street leads from the market- 
 place down to the Muddring^ or harbour. But if 
 this information is correct, I do not know why that 
 street was chosen to bear my name, for neither was 
 I born there nor did I ever live there. 
 
 " I was, indeed, born in a house on the market- 
 place, 'Stockmanns Gaard,' as it was then called. 
 It stood exactly opposite the front of the church, | 
 with its high flight of steps and conspicuous tower. 
 
 ' Probably derived from mudre, to dredge — the harbour being 
 dredged on shallow shores. 
 
6 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 To the right of the church stood the town pillory, 
 and to the left the town-hall, with the prison and 
 the lock-up for mad persons. The fourth side of 
 the market-square was occupied by the High School 
 and the Lower School. The church stood apart in 
 the middle. 
 
 "This then was the first view of the world on 
 which my eyes rested. All buildings — nothing 
 green, no open country landscape. But in this 
 quadrangle of stone and wood the air was filled all 
 day with the noise of two cascades, the Langefos 
 and the Klosterfos, and the sound of many waters ; 
 and above the roar of all these cataracts came a 
 piercing voice, like the screaming, weeping, and 
 sighing of a wailing woman. This proceeded from 
 hundreds of sawmills, which were worked by the 
 falls. When, at a later day, I read of the guillo- 
 tine, I could not help thinking of these sawmills. 
 
 "The church was beyond question the finest 
 building in the town. When, at the end of the 
 last century, the whole place was burnt down on 
 Christmas Eve, through the carelessness of a maid- 
 servant, the old church too was destroyed. The 
 girl, of course, was executed. But the town, which 
 was rebuilt with straight wide streets down the 
 hollows and up the slopes to which they clung, 
 gained on the occasion a new church, which the in- 
 habitants declared, with commendable pride, should 
 be built of yellow Dutch brick, and designed by an 
 architect from Copenhagen, exactly like the church 
 
EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. 7 
 
 at Kongsberg.^ I did not at that time duly value 
 this distinction, but what always attracted my atten- 
 tion was a burly, clumsy, white angel, which, on 
 week days, floated in the air under the arched roof 
 with a bowl in its hand, but on Sundays, when 
 there was a child to be christened, softly descended 
 earthwards. 
 
 " Even more perhaps than the white angel in the 
 church, the black poodle of the tower engaged my 
 fancy. From the tower the watchman used to pro- 
 claim the hour at night. This poodle had fiery red 
 eyes, but he was rarely visible. Indeed, so far as I 
 know, he was never seen but once. It was one 
 New Year's morning, at the very moment when the 
 watchman shouted ' One ' through the opening in 
 the front of the tower. The black poodle came up 
 the turret-stair behind him, stood still, and did no 
 more than look at him with his fiery eyes ; but the 
 watchman fell out of the tower window down into 
 the market-place, where the devout, who had gone 
 to usher in the New Year's morning by listening to 
 a sermon, saw him lying dead. From that night the 
 watchman never calls ' One ' from the church tower 
 at Skien. This incident of the watchman and the 
 poodle had happened long before my time, and I 
 have since heard that similar events had been known 
 of old in many Norwegian churches. 
 
 1 Kongsberg, a town a few miles southward of Christiania, has a 
 large stone church of the eighteenth century. The church at Skien 
 was restored in 1777. 
 
8 CHILDHOOD, 
 
 "But that particular opening in the tower was 
 noteworthy to me while I was yet but a child, from 
 my having there received the first conscious and per- 
 manent impression on my mind. My nurse one day 
 took me up the tower and allowed me to sit on the 
 ledge outside, holding me firmly from behind, ot 
 course, in her faithful arms. I perfectly recollect 
 how amazed I was at looking down on the tops of 
 the hats of the people below. I looked into our 
 own rooms, seeing the window-frames and curtains, 
 and my mother sitting at one of the windows ; in- 
 deed, I could see over the roof into the yard, where 
 our brown horse stood hitched up to the stable-door 
 and whisking his tail. A bright tin pail was hang- 
 ing against the door. Then suddenly there was 
 a great hurry and bustle and signalling from our 
 house, and the nurse hastily snatched me in and 
 hastened down with me. I remember nothing more ; 
 but I was often told afterwards that my mother had 
 caught sight of me up in the tower-window, and, with 
 a loud shriek, had fainted away, as people used to 
 do in those days ; and that when presently I was 
 taken back to her, she cried, and kissed and fondled 
 me. As a boy, I never went across the market- 
 square without looking up at the tower-window. I 
 always felt as though the opening and the church- 
 poodle, were some special concern of mine. 
 
 " I have only one single recollection more of those 
 early years of my life. Among other gifts from my 
 godfathers, I had a large silver coin, on which a 
 
EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. 9 
 
 man's head was stamped. The man had a high 
 forehead, a large aquiHne nose, and a projecting 
 under-hp ; his throat was bare, which always struck 
 me as very strange. My nurse told me that the man 
 on the coin was 'King Frederick Rex.' One day 
 I took it into my head to play with this coin on the 
 floor, with the disastrous result that it slipped into a 
 crack. My parents, I believe, thought this an omen 
 of evil, as the coin had been a christening-gift. The 
 planks were taken up ; but, in spite of much careful 
 seeking and groping, ' King Frederick Rex ' never 
 came to light again. It was a long time before I ceased 
 to regard myself as a great criminal, and whenever 
 I saw the town constable, Peter Tysker, come out of 
 the town-hall towards our house, I ran off as fast as 
 I could into the nursery and hid under the bed. 
 
 " We did not live long in the house on the market- 
 place. My father bought a larger house, into which 
 we moved when I was about four years old. This 
 new home was a corner house, a little higher up the 
 town, at the foot of the Hundervad Bakke,'^ so named 
 after an old doctor who spoke German ; his dignified 
 wife used to ride out in what was then called a glass 
 coach, which in winter was used as a sleigh. There 
 were a great many large rooms in our house, below 
 and above, and here my parents led a very social 
 life. But we boys lived but little within doors. 
 The market-square, where the two public schools 
 were, was the natural meeting-place and playground 
 
 ^ Bakke means hill. 
 
10 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 for all the lads of the town. The High School was 
 then under the direction of Rector Orn, a very dis- 
 tinguished and amiable old man; the head-master 
 of the Lower School was Iver Flasrud, the beadle, a 
 fine old man too, who was at the same time in great 
 request as haircutter and barber. Many a fierce 
 battle was fought by the boys of these two schools 
 under the walls of the church ; but I, as belonging 
 to neither, was generally a looker-on. Besides, I was 
 not pugnacious in my childhood. 
 
 " I found a far greater attraction in the pillory of 
 which I have spoken, and in the town-hall, with all 
 its mysterious and sinister appliances. The pillory 
 was a post, painted reddish-brown, and about the 
 height of a man's stature. There was a large round 
 knob at the top, which had been black. At the time 
 I speak of, it looked like a benevolent and inviting 
 face somewhat askew. In front of the post hung 
 an iron chain to which an open hoop was attached ; 
 the two halves of this hoop always looked to me like 
 two arms which were ready and eager to clutch me 
 by the throat. The pillory had not, however, been 
 used for many years, but I remember it perfectly, 
 still standing at the time when I lived at Skien. 
 Whether it still exists I do not know. 
 
 "And then there was the town-hall. Like the 
 church, it had a high flight of steps. Under it were 
 the prison-cells with barred windows looking out 
 on the market-place. Behind those bars I have 
 seen many pale and gloomy faces. One room, quite 
 
EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. ii 
 
 underneath, in the cellars, was called the madman's 
 cell; and incredible as it now seems to me, it was 
 actually used, I believe, at that time to confine mad 
 people in. That room, Hke the others, had barred 
 windows, but inside the bars the whole of the small 
 opening was filled in with a strong iron plate, pierced 
 with small round holes and looking like a collander. 
 It was related of this den that it had been the prison 
 of a certain well-known criminal, named Brendeis, 
 who had been branded; and I believe, too, that 
 an escaped serf, who was afterwards recaptured, 
 had been shut up there, and then flogged on the 
 Mountain Market (Li-torvet); I remember hearing 
 of this poor wretch from eye-witnesses, that when 
 he was led to the place of punishment he went 
 dancing, but that he had to be taken back to prison 
 in a cart. 
 
 " Skien, in my young days, was an exceedingly 
 lively and sociable town, quite unlike what it sub- 
 sequently became. Several highly cultivated and 
 wealthy families of consequence lived in the town 
 itself or on their estates in the neighbourhood. 
 Most of these families were more or less closely 
 related, and dances, dinners, and music-parties 
 followed each other, winter and summer, in almost 
 unbroken succession. Many travellers also passed 
 through the town, and as there were as yet no 
 regular inns, they lodged with friends or connec- 
 tions. We almost always had guests in our large 
 roomy house, especially at Christmas and Fair-time, 
 
12 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 when the house was full, and we kept an open table 
 from morning till night. The Fair at Skien was held 
 in February, and it was a very happy time for us 
 boys; we began to save up our money six months 
 beforehand, to be able to see the jugglers, and rope- 
 dancers, and horse-riders, and to buy ginger-bread 
 down in the booths. Whether this Fair was an 
 important one from a commercial point of view I 
 know not ; it survives in my memory only as a great 
 popular hohday which lasted for about a week. 
 
 "The 17th of Mayi was not at that time kept 
 with any special festivities at Skien. A few young 
 people would go out to shoot at a mark with pop- 
 guns on the Bleaching Hill (Blegebakken), or to 
 burn ' witches ; ' ^ but that was about all. I sus- 
 pect that this reserve on the part of our usually 
 jovial town arose chiefly from its respeci for the 
 feelings of a man whom we all held in great awe, 
 whose ancestral home lay close to Skien, and whom, 
 for many reasons, no one cared to offend. 
 
 " But St. John's Eve made up for it. There were 
 no public observances, but the boys and young 
 men assembled in five or six or more parties, each 
 concerned in collecting fuel for its own bonfire. So 
 early as Whitsuntide we would begin to haunt the 
 shipyards and stores to beg tar-barrels. A peculiar 
 custom had existed from time immemorial. Any- 
 
 1 This day, now universally kept as a holiday, is the anniversary of 
 the ratification of the Norwegian Constitution. 
 3 A sort of squib made of straw and gunpowder. 
 
EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. 13 
 
 thing we could not get by fair means we stole, 
 without either the owner or the police ever think- 
 ing of proceeding against the felony. Thus by 
 degrees each set had collected a whole heap of 
 empty tar-barrels. We enjoyed the same recog- 
 nised right over old stranded boat-hulks. If we 
 were so lucky as to succeed in dragging one away 
 and hiding our booty, we had won the right of 
 possession, or at any rate no one disputed it. Then 
 on St. John's Eve the hulk was carried in triumph 
 through the streets to the place where our bonfire 
 was stacked. In it a fiddler was perched. I have 
 often seen such a procession, and once took part 
 in one." 
 
 What Ibsen relates in this passage is enough to 
 give us an idea of what the influences of his child- 
 hood must have been : gloom and melancholy had 
 the larger share. The solemnity of the church, the 
 horrors of the prison, the threat of the pillory, the 
 terrors of the madhouse, combined to make an 
 impression which might well cast a shadow over his 
 youthful light-heartedness and infuse a precocious 
 gravity, even though the festivities of Fair-time and 
 Midsummer Eve were their antidote. 
 
 The good people of Skien have from time im- 
 memorial enjoyed a reputation for piety. The reli- 
 gious tendencies which lead to sectarianism have 
 long flourished there on a grateful soil. Early in 
 the last century the town was known as a hotbed 
 of pietism, and in Ibsen's youth, Lammers, the 
 
14 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 famous preacher, laboured there, and started the 
 movement which has since become known by his 
 name. 
 
 From Skien, as its focus, it spread over the 
 country, introducing a ferment into spiritual circles. 
 The movement was naturally strongest in Skien 
 itself, and Ibsen came into the closest contact with 
 it, since several of his nearest relations caught the 
 afQatus. Recollections and revivals of that time of 
 religious excitement supplied some portion of the 
 materials for Brand. 
 
 Another work of Ibsen's, De Unges Forbund (The 
 Young Men's League), has also, and not without 
 reason, been supposed to have had its origin in his 
 reminiscences of his native town. 
 
 Skien had its "aristocracy" of officials and the 
 wealthy old families of the town and neighbourhood ; 
 the rest were " plebeians." Between these castes 
 there was as insurmountable a barrier as between 
 the noble and citizen classes of a small German 
 town in former ages. No degree of wealth or 
 energy would qualify a man to pass it ; every one 
 who rose from the ranks was regarded as a 
 parvenu like the landowner Monsen in the " Young 
 Men's League," however firmly his position was 
 established; but, on the other hand, it was easy 
 enough to be excluded from the select circle, if the 
 state of his fortunes should no longer justify any 
 one in figuring in it. 
 
 The Ibsen household belonged to the "aristo- 
 
EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. 15 
 
 cracy," both by position and connection, and in 
 Ibsen's earliest years was a centre of the social life 
 of the town. Ibsen was a man who, by his wit and 
 by other social gifts, gathered people about him, and 
 besides this he was a free-handed host, who loved to 
 keep open house on a large and very liberal scale. 
 
 But when Henrik Ibsen was eight years old this 
 easy-going life came to a sudden close. His father 
 became insolvent ; and the only possession left to 
 the family when his various creditors were satisfied 
 was a small, neglected, and decayed estate, Venstob, 
 not far from the town. Here they took refuge from 
 misfortune, and the life they led there was one ot 
 poverty and retirement, in strong contrast to their 
 former brilliant position. If the family had not be- 
 fore been aware of the wide social gulf which existed 
 in the little town, they now, in the day of disaster, 
 were made to feel it keenly. Their new status had 
 no doubt cast a dark shadow over the little house- 
 hold, and next to the parents, Henrik Ibsen, as the 
 eldest son, felt it most. He suddenly found himself 
 an outcast, and at an early age had gone through 
 the experience to which he gave expression in one 
 of his earliest poems, written in 1850: — 
 
 Either an invited guest 
 To life's feast thou enterest, 
 Or as a beholder only, 
 
 While along the street thou farest, 
 Shivering in the wind and lonely, 
 
 Through the blazing window starest. 
 
1 5 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 It is quite certain that while still very young he 
 attracted observation by his singular gravity. He 
 did not play like other children. When his four 
 younger brothers and sisters were romping together 
 out of doors, he would withdraw into a little room 
 by the kitchen-entrance, and bolt himself in to pro- 
 tect himself against the heedless incursions of the 
 others. Here he would sit, not merely in the sum- 
 mer, but in the winter, through the severest cold. 
 " He was never a pleasant companion to us," his 
 sister writes in the letter before quoted, " and we 
 always did our utmost to disturb him by throwing 
 stones or snowballs at the wall or the door. We 
 wanted him to play with us, and when he could no 
 longer endure our teasing, he would rush out and 
 drive us away. However, he was unskilled in all 
 athletic exercises, and violence was not in him ; 
 nothing ever came of it. When he had chased us 
 far enough, he went back into his room again." 
 
 What did he do there ? Chiefly he sat absorbed 
 in sundry old volumes, of which he had obtained 
 possession. In that little room he acquired that 
 familiarity with old books of which Hedvig speaks 
 in the third act of Vildanden (The Wild Duck), and 
 the words he puts into her mouth may very well be 
 a reminiscence of his own childhood. 
 
 " And do you read those books ? " Gregers asks. 
 
 " Oh, yes ; all those I can. But most of them 
 are in English, and I do not know English. Still 
 I can look at the prints. Here is a heavy, big 
 
EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. 17 
 
 book called 'Harryson's History of London.' It 
 must be quite a hundred years old, and it is full 
 of pictures. The frontispiece is Death, with an 
 hour-glass, and a young lady. I think that dread- 
 ful ; but there are a great many more, of churches, 
 and castles, and streets, and large ships sailing on 
 the sea." 
 
 And when he was not busy with his books he 
 studied magic ! " Often on a Sunday evening he 
 obtained leave to perform as a conjuror in one of 
 the sitting-rooms " (the letter goes on to say), " and 
 the neighbours were invited to be spectators. I 
 can see him now in his round jacket, standing 
 behind a huge chest, which was brought in and 
 dusted for the occasion ; and he would work 
 wonders which to the amazed beholders appeared 
 quite magical. No one, of course, knew that Hen- 
 rik's younger brother sat in the chest, having been 
 well paid beforehand for doing so. Otherwise he 
 threatened to make a noise, and this was the most 
 horrible thing that could happen from Henrik's 
 point of view, so he always promised everything 
 the boy asked for." 
 
 He also .worked diligently with pencil and brush. 
 He painted a great number of figures on cardboard 
 in gaudy costumes, and afterwards cut them out 
 and fixed them to little blocks of wood so that they 
 would stand. He then composed them into various 
 groups, some as if in conversation, others in atti- 
 tudes to convey the idea that some important event 
 
1 8 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 was going forward. These were the first indica- 
 tions of stage-craft in the future dramatist. 
 
 The only out-of-doors amusement that he cared 
 for was building. To this he sometimes devoted 
 himself. " I remember," his sister writes, " among 
 other things a fortress, to my childish apprehension 
 quite a work of art, which cost him and his younger 
 brother long and severe labour. But the fortress 
 was not to stand long; when it was finished, he 
 took it by storm, and levelled it with the ground." 
 He had probably read of some historical event 
 which he was thus trying to realise. 
 
 He was sent to a public school at Skien con- 
 ducted by two theological postulants. All he learnt 
 was the regular round of tasks and a little Latin. 
 He took particular interest in the lessons on religion, 
 and would sit for hours looking up the passages in 
 the Bible to which references were given. 
 
 [Mr. J. B. Halvorsen in his article on Ibsen ^ has 
 given a few most welcome details of Ibsen's school- 
 life, which may be inserted here into Mr. Jaeger's 
 narrative : — 
 
 " Henrik Ibsen was placed at a small school, 
 where he showed the greatest interest in history 
 and religion. His master remembers him as a quiet 
 boy, with strange eyes and an uncommon talent for 
 drawing, but with nothing else remarkable about his 
 appearance or tastes. A schoolfellow, however, 
 remembers him better, and speaks of a fine head, 
 
 1 Norsk Forfatierleksikon, Parts aa and 23, 1889. 
 
EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. 19 
 
 a good intellect, a rather quick, irritable, and vehe- 
 ment temper, a sharp tongue, a satirical humour, 
 but at the same time a friendly and companionable 
 nature, as his distinguishing characteristics. He had 
 a head above most people. He would read history, 
 and more especially that of classical antiquity, with 
 the greatest interest, and showed remarkable depth 
 of apprehension. I remember too," the same writer 
 had said in 1875, "how one day the whole class sat 
 in perfect silence while Ibsen read us a composition 
 of his own, in which he related a dream to this 
 effect : — 
 
 "We were wandering on the high lands, when 
 the darkness of night surprised us, bringing us to 
 exhaustion and despair. Like Jacob of old, we lay 
 down to sleep with our heads pillowed on stones. 
 My companions soon fell asleep, but I could not. 
 At last fatigue was too much for me, and in a dream 
 I saw an angel standing over me who said, ' Rise 
 up and follow me.' 'Whither wilt thou lead me in 
 this darkness ? ' I asked. ' Come,' he said, ' I will 
 show you a sight — human life in its reality and 
 truth.' At this I followed him, full of dread, and 
 we went down endless steps, till' the rocks had piled 
 themselves in huge vaults overhead, and before us 
 lay a vast burial-ground, full of horrible tokens 
 and symbols of mortality and change — a world of 
 corpses, all fallen under the stroke of death; pale, 
 faded, and extinguished splendour. Everywhere 
 there was a dim gleam of hght, Hke that reflected 
 
20 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 on a churchyard from the church-walls and whitened 
 crosses over the graves, while the bleached skeletons, 
 which filled the dark void in endless ranks, stood 
 in a brighter light, shed by themselves as it were. 
 A cold horror came over me at the sight as I stood 
 by the angel's side. ' Here you see — all is vanity.' 
 Then there was a murmur, like the first low roll of 
 a coming storm — a sigh breaking from a thousand 
 breasts ; and it rose to a howling blast, so that the 
 dead were moved, and stretched forth their arms to 
 me. And I woke with a scream, wet with the cold 
 dews of night." Certainly a remarkable style for 
 a lad not yet fifteen — for at that age Ibsen left 
 school — and doubly noteworthy because, in this 
 strange romance of the child, we may detect a tone 
 which harmonises wonderfully with the fundamental 
 key of the man's later poetry. 
 
 " On being questioned, Ibsen wrote that he well 
 remembers having written this composition, which 
 resulted in a coolness between him and the master 
 who taught us our mother-tongue, of whom, how- 
 ever, he speaks as an otherwise admirable and 
 cultivated man. The master had, in fact, taken 
 it into his head that the boy had copied his theme 
 out of some book, and when he put forward this 
 hypothesis in class, ' I repelled it,' says Ibsen, 
 ' with more energy than he approved of.' "] 
 
 When Henrik was fourteen, his parents returned 
 to live in Skien. After a time he was confirmed, 
 and then left home to earn his living and make his 
 
EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. 21 
 
 own way in the world. Under the financial condi- 
 tions which fettered him, there could be no question 
 of choosing the career he might prefer; he must 
 content himself with that which he could follow 
 with the smallest outlay, and which would most 
 quickly enable him to maintain himself 
 
 Ibsen's wish was to become an artist. He had 
 worked with steadily growing devotion at drawing 
 and painting, and even went on with it after he had 
 come before the public as a writer. How far he 
 had any great talent in this direction I cannot here 
 pronounce, for I have been unable to discover a 
 single specimen of his artistic efforts.^ But that it 
 was more than a transient amusement is plain from 
 the deep interest in pictorial art which he has pre- 
 served through all these years to the present day. 
 The only possessions which Ibsen has laid himself 
 out to acquire are pictures ; and during his frequent 
 and long visits to Italy he has made a very pleasing 
 collection of pictures of the Renaissance, of which 
 he is very fond, and which he carries with him, 
 without counting the cost, wherever he proposes to 
 remain for any length of time. His unerring and 
 subtle judgment in matters of art also shows that 
 he must have had some talent for it. 
 
 In his youth, however, there could, of course, be 
 no idea of cultivating this talent; the means at his 
 father's command were far too small. He was sent 
 
 ^ Botten-Hansen speaks of him as "a not unskilful dilettante 
 painter. " Illustreret Nyhsdsblad, 1863. 
 
22 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 to an apothecary at Grimstad to study the busi- 
 ness. He left his family and his native town at the 
 I age of sixteen, never to return excepting for two or 
 
 /fthree short visits. 
 
 /' What had he brought away with him from his life 
 in his native town ? It had at an early age laid a 
 weight on his spirit. It had roused him to dread 
 
 \- and horror of all the means employed by the State 
 against those who by their own fault, or by inevi- 
 table fate and innocently, are at war with established 
 order. The prison, the madhouse, the gallows, and 
 public opinion had impressed themselves on his 
 mind as a standing threat. The contrast of poverty 
 and wealth had come home to him as his earliest 
 experience. He had known both when he was old 
 I enough to think clearly, and he had at the same 
 time learnt to feel the different social estimation in 
 which the poor and the rich are held. All this 
 had confirmed the reserve of which he carried the 
 germs in his nature; it had thrown him back on 
 himself, had made him taciturn, grave, and unde- 
 monstrative. His life had its roots, not in inter- 
 course with his fellowmen, but in the world of 
 thought and dreams. 
 
 Thus equipped, he set out from his native town 
 for his new place of residence. He arrived there,, 
 as has been said, in his sixteenth year, and re- 
 mained till he was nearly two-and-twenty. Thus 
 he spent more than five years in this out-of-the-way 
 nook. Grimstad is, in fact, a still smaller place than 
 
EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. 23 
 
 Skien. When Ibsen lived there, it had not more 
 than 800 inhabitants. 
 
 Like most of the towns of Norway east of 
 Christiansand, it is a small seaport, well-to-do 
 and substantial; and wealth means comfort. In 
 so small a town the ideas of the residents do not 
 soar high nor fly far. When the good folks ven- 
 ture out of doors, it is, as a rule, only to inquire 
 whether "the ship" has come safely, or to look 
 into the accounts of the last cargo. Rarely do the 
 great events of the outer world send a feeble wave 
 to die in these remote towns, and then the good 
 folks only exchange a few sympathetic words when 
 they meet in the street, shake their heads, and go 
 on their way. In such a town there is but one 
 club, one apothecary, one barber's room, and one 
 inn. The apothecary's shop is the "Exchange," 
 where all the idlers of the place meet to discuss 
 the events of the day, especially the home-news, 
 which is always the most interesting. Every man 
 bows to his neighbour; the richest man gets the 
 lowest bows, the next richest has the next degree 
 of respect, and so on to the workman, who has 
 no more than a nod, while he stands reverently 
 hat in hand. A stranger arriving in such a place 
 is surprised at the respectful greeting he receives 
 from every one he meets, and is made almost un- 
 comfortable by so much politeness. This comes of 
 his not being accustomed to these patriarchal in- 
 stitutions; but the simple native is, and thinks it 
 
24 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 prudent to conform to them when he meets a 
 well-dressed stranger in the street; for it is im- 
 possible to say that he may not be a person of 
 quaHty. In such a place everything goes on 
 quietly, steadily, and slowly. Every one has plenty 
 of time, and hurry is a torment; for what is not 
 done to-day may be done to-morrow. Everything 
 which goes beyond the standard of custom is excess ; 
 personal peculiarity is accounted a fault; every 
 exceptionally vigorous expression of individual 
 vitality is regarded as eccentricity, and eccentricity 
 is a crime. 
 
 But beyond lies the sea, mighty and wide, bring- 
 ing in money and wreckage, and the latest Paris 
 fashions from the great restless world so far away, 
 to the little dead-alive town. Such are these little 
 seaports even now; and such undoubtedly was 
 Grimstad in Ibsen's youth, and for long after. 
 
 We know what Ibsen's life was in this little 
 community from the description he has given in 
 the preface to Catilina. We know that these 
 five years were to him a period of evolution and 
 fermentation. He bore within himself bold plans 
 for the future, and vast conceptions possessed his 
 soul. He would not be content to remain an 
 apothecary; he would, at any rate, chmb a step 
 higher on the social ladder : he would study medi- 
 cine and become a doctor. And at the same time 
 the poetic gift first began to stir within him and 
 show signs of life. He stole hours for study, and 
 
EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. 25 
 
 from those stolen hours he again stole minutes for 
 writing verse. 
 
 It was 1 848-49. The revolution of February, and 
 the political events which followed, set Europe in 
 0. turmoil, and this unrest was reflected in the mind 
 of young Henrik Ibsen. He watched the progress 
 of events, so far as was possible for an apothecary's 
 apprentice in Grimstad, and with youthful enthu- 
 siasm ranged himself on the side of those who 
 fought for freedom and against the oppressors in 
 every land. These sympathies find utterance in 
 the verses he wrote at this time. Thus, when in 
 August 1849 the Magyars had suffered a decisive 
 defeat, he wrote a glowing poem. Til Ungarn (To 
 Hungary), in which he gave expression to his 
 grief at their overthrow and that of liberty; but 
 he ends with finding consolation in the thought 
 that the Hungarian champions of freedom who had 
 been slain, like those of Poland, and those others 
 who had watered the soil of Germany with their 
 blood from the scaffold, would stand forth as a 
 splendid example to future generations : — 
 
 Yes ! when 'gainst the thrones of tyrants rise as one the 
 
 bold young races, 
 Like an autumn tempest smiting pillars of the kings' high 
 
 places, 
 Then shall soar the 'name of Magyar, and, the hush all 
 
 rent asunder, 
 From the throats of conquering legions, like a splendid 
 
 watchword, thunder. 
 
26 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 It was at this time that he wrote the series of 
 sonnets on the Danish-German war which he men- 
 tions in the preface to Catilina. There were twelve 
 of them, and they bore the threatening title Vaagner, 
 Skandinaver (Awake, Scandinavians).^ This was a 
 sort of prelude to En Broder i Nod (A Brother in 
 Need), in which the young writer proclaims in burn- 
 ing words that Norway and Sweden must hasten to 
 help Denmark if they "hope to save their honour and 
 secure their own position for the future as indepen- 
 dent states. 
 
 That a young man in so modest a rank of life 
 should dare to have such thoughts, and utter them 
 in verse to boot, could not, of course, remain un- 
 noticed in so small a place, all the less as under 
 such momentous circumstances he could not re- 
 frain from speaking out in a vehement manner 
 which matched with his poetry. Was a greenhorn 
 apothecary's apprentice to dare to speak in the 
 presence of his elders on matters on which they 
 themselves did not venture to have an opinion ? 
 This was really going too far ! 
 
 Nor was this the end of the matter. Ibsen, 
 having fallen out with his neighbours, was not 
 therefore disposed to withdraw from the arena. 
 He had the shyness of a reserved man who hesi- 
 tates to put himself forward, and the timidity of a 
 retiring nature which dreads making a noise and 
 
 1 Et opraab til de norske og svenske irodre (An Appeal to our Nor- 
 wegian and Swedish Brothers) was the whole title. 
 
EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. 27 
 
 hearing ironical laughter ; but for that very reason 
 he regarded the fact that his utterances' had aroused 
 wrath and mockery as a great event, and instead of 
 retreating before his assailants, he put himself in an 
 attitude of aggression. The young and undeveloped 
 genius set his lance with youthftil confidence at the 
 little provincial community. " I owe it to truth," he 
 says, whimsically enough, in the preface to Catilina, 
 "to add that, by thus coming forward, I justified 
 no very great hope that Society might reckon on 
 any increase of citizen virtue in me; since I had 
 run the gauntlet, with epigrams and caricatures, 
 against many a one who had deserved better of 
 me, and whose friendship I really valued. How- 
 ever, while the great struggle was raging outside, I 
 remained on a war-footing against the little world 
 in which I found myself stuck fast by circumstances 
 and the requirements of fife." 
 
 It may be said, of course, that this whole affair 
 was only a storm in a puddle ; but how characteristic 
 of Ibsen ! How plainly it points to his later attitude 
 towards Society ! 
 
 The relations between the individual and the com- 
 monwealth are, as a rule, understood to be peace- 
 able. Society is an agreement between various and 
 several persons to do or to leave undone certain 
 things; the welfare of the whole is the welfare of 
 the individual. Society is thus the protector of the 
 individual on condition that the individual fulfils 
 certain obligations to Society — obligations which 
 
28 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 tend to maintain and strengthen the system of reci- 
 procal defence on which their existence is based, 
 and to secure the equable and healthy progress 
 which is their end and object. But so idyllic and 
 peaceful a connection as this presupposes does not 
 actually exist between Society and the individual; 
 it has its darker aspects ; and the worst of these is 
 the tendency of Society to domineer over its separate 
 members. Society constantly manifests a disposi- 
 tion to exert its governing influence over depart- 
 ments where it is forbidden to intrude, and strives 
 to lay down laws and limitations for the individual 
 in cases where he has a right to be his own master. 
 For instance, each man has a right to be indepen- 
 dent and unfettered in his opinions and convictions ; 
 and in such matters Society is especially inclined to 
 give those of the majority the authority of a standard, 
 and to condemn the individual who fails to observe 
 it. The smaller the community, the more it insists 
 on taking private concerns under its jurisdiction, 
 and the more is it disposed to lay down the law ; 
 and in cases where the individual is a law to him- 
 self, it manifests even less disposition to recognise 
 the justification of an exception. In this there is a 
 danger, not alone for private liberty, but for Society 
 itself; for its progress depends on originality, and 
 originaHty is the exception to the rule. Hence 
 genius is the most important and necessary excep- 
 tion of all ; and when Society has so narrowed its 
 bounds that there is no room for genius, it becomes 
 
EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. 29 
 
 needful for genius to revolt against Society, and 
 make the exception the rule, in opposition to the 
 tyranny of law. 
 
 Thus, in particular cases, the attitude of the in- 
 dividual to Society is one not of friendly necessity, 
 but of hostile antagonism. Society then has to be 
 considered as the tyrant rather than the protector 
 of the individual, as suppressing rather than pro- 
 moting personal development ; and law as an instru- 
 ment of tortvire, in which the individual is crushed 
 or stretched till it fits the accepted pattern-mould. 
 And these are the ideas which have given rise to 
 the anarchical theories of government of our day. 
 
 Henrik Ibsen, while still but an apothecary's ap- 
 prentice at Grimstad, already found himself in this 
 hostile attitude to his immediate neighbours ; it was 
 the pale young dawn of those views which after- 
 wards flashed forth with such vivid clearness from 
 a whole series of works in his riper age. 
 
 It was under these conditions that he proceeded 
 with his preparations for examination on Sallust's 
 " Catilina " and Cicero's " Orations." 
 
 He assimilated these works on the anarchist of 
 ancient Rome ; and out of Sallust's hypocritical 
 moral indignation and Cicero's advocate's eloquence, 
 an image of the rebel Catiline rose before Ibsen's 
 mind, which, in more ways than one, shadowed 
 forth his own later development. 
 
 The Swedish critic Vasenius has set himself the 
 task of proving that the Catiline of Ibsen's drama is a 
 
30 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 faithful picture of the historical Catiline.^ But, in- 
 teresting as his attempt is from an aesthetic point of 
 view, it is of small psychological value, for it teaches 
 us nothing of the poet's relation to his subject as it 
 presented itself to him. The poet of Catilina had, in 
 fact, no idea of the historical investigation to which the 
 Finland critic refers. He knew Catiline only from 
 Sallust and Cicero. The only historical research 
 worth making in such a case would be a compari- 
 son of Ibsen's work with those authorities, to see 
 whether he has been faithful to them. In this place 
 it will suffice to examine a few leading points. 
 
 On comparing the Catiline of Sallust and of 
 Cicero, the only difference we detect is one, not of 
 nature but of degree. In the eyes of both he is 
 simply an unbridled fortune-hunter, whose only 
 concern is to satisfy his passions, and who, in a 
 sort of desperate frenzy, clutches at desperate means 
 when he cannot attain his ends by legitimate ways. 
 To Ibsen, on the contrary, he is first and chiefly 
 an indignant idealist, who, seeing the unfathomable 
 rottenness of the times, is horrified, but who is 
 nevertheless too much the spoilt child of that de- 
 generate age to come forward with any success as 
 a reformer of it. Catiline acts and talks as though 
 he were half a Cato. We have only to read the 
 description he gives of the state of Rome in the 
 first scene : — 
 
 1 Valfrid Vasenius : Henrik Ibsens dramatiska diktning i dessfSrsta 
 skede, estetisk undersokning, p. 50. 
 
EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. 31 
 
 Far more than ever 
 Injustice rules us here and tyrant-counsels. 
 In name the state may still be a republic ; 
 And yet each free-born burgher prove a bond-slave, 
 A debtor, one dependent, like a thrall, 
 Upon the leave and largess of a Senate. 
 Our ancient social spirit all has vanished. 
 Gone is Rome's boasted liberal independence ; — 
 Life and security of limb have grown 
 Gifts that man's gold must purchase from the Senate. 
 Not justice now, but force must be obeyed, 
 And coarsely browbeats all that's fair and noble. 
 
 And the poet undoubtedly intended to be taken 
 literally when he makes Catiline describe himself 
 immediately after as — 
 
 A man whose heart bums in the cause of freedom, 
 A foe of violent unrighteousness, 
 A friend of all who are oppressed and weak, 
 Eager and bold to lay the tyrant low. 
 
 And again, when he afterwards makes him speak 
 of his scheme as follows : — 
 
 My virhole design is civic liberty. 
 
 And civic thought as in the days of old 
 
 It ruled amongst us. Back will I recall 
 
 Those golden years when every Roman gave 
 
 His life's blood gladly for his country's honour, 
 
 4nd laid down all he had to serve the people. 
 
 In one place, indeed, the author makes him speak 
 of Cato by name, when alluding to his projects : — 
 
 Yet once I dreamed, and mighty visions passed 
 Before my brain, and drew meafter them. 
 
32 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 I dreamt that I, like Icarus, was borne 
 
 On mounting wings under the cope of heaven ; 
 
 I dreamt that to my hand the gods had granted 
 
 A giant's strength, and bade me wield the lightning, — 
 
 And that its bolt in this right hand was grasped, 
 
 And flung down on the city far beneath me. 
 
 And that red flames arose and licked the life out, 
 
 Till Rome was a brown heap of dusty ruins. 
 
 Then cried I with a voice exceeding loud, 
 
 And called the friends of Cato from their graves ; 
 
 A thousand phantoms came at my appeal. 
 
 Took life, and lifted Rome out of her ashes. 
 
 In the whole of this speech on citizenship and 
 civic freedom, in this outburst against oppression 
 and injustice, Ibsen's revolutionary enthusiasm rings 
 out. General and indefinite as it is, it nevertheless 
 stands forth in Catilina as a literary monument of 
 the revolutionary ferment of the forties. The revolu- 
 tion of February had confessedly a social aspect ; 
 and in this there was a point of contact with Catiline 
 which might have sufficed to make him the hero 
 of any really revolutionary poet of the day ; for 
 Catiline's programme was to some extent socialist. 
 When Cicero tells us that he denied that any man 
 who was not himself poor could be regarded as a 
 true defender of the cause of the poor,i this is a 
 characteristic which such a poet would inevitably 
 have utilised. Ibsen, however, lets it pass almost 
 unnoticed ; he gives a free rendering of the phrase, 
 
 1 " Negavit miserorum fidelem defensorem inveniri posse, "nisi eum, 
 qui ipse miser esset. " 
 
EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. 33 
 
 ' a friend of the oppressed and weak," and lets it 
 drop. The socialist side of the revolutionary move- 
 ment of that time had evidently not as yet caught 
 tiold of him. Catiline's plots took the form in his 
 drama of an essentially political and vaguely revolu- 
 tionary tendency, to which Ibsen gave substance and 
 shape, and he clothed them in verse only so far as 
 the various historical situations required. Rome 
 in Catiline's day was a republic tottering to its 
 fall ; hence his schemes were directed to a recon- 
 struction of old republican Rome ; while the leaders 
 of the revolution of the forties desired, not to rein- 
 state an ancient type of state, but to create a new 
 one. 
 
 Thus Catilina is to some degree no more than 
 the political treatment, in the form of a historical 
 drama, of Ibsen's feelings and impulses at that time. 
 It is so precisely in so far as that the poet puts his 
 most secret thoughts and dreams into his hero's 
 mouth. In the letter, so often mentioned, from 
 Ibsen's sister, she relates a conversation she had 
 with her brother about that time on the occasion of 
 one of his visits to his home. It was in a walk to 
 Kapitelsbjerget, a hill near Skien, on which stand the 
 ruins of an old convent-chapel. He explained to 
 her that his aspiration "was to reach the highest 
 and most perfect attainable pitch of greatness and 
 clearness." 
 
 " And when you have reached it, what next ? " 
 she asked. 
 
34 
 
 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 " Then I would die," he replied. This ideal, high- 
 flown, and disinterested ambition of his youth is to 
 be found exactly expressed in the following Unes 
 from Catilina : — 
 
 If but for one brief moment I could flame 
 And blaze through space, and be a falling star ; 
 If only once, and by one glorious deed, 
 I could but knit the name of Catiline 
 With glory and with deathless high renown, — 
 Then should I blithely, in the hour of conquest, 
 Leave all, and hie me to an alien shore, 
 Press the keen dagger gaily to my heart. 
 And die ; for then I should have lived indeed. 
 
 But exact as this picture of Catiline's ideal crav- 
 ings was of those of his poet, Ibsen, as he worked 
 out the drama, had to deviate from it to lay the 
 basis of the tragical issue. 
 
 When Ibsen's Catiline succumbs, without having 
 realised his great dreams, two causes have led up to 
 it. One is to be found in the contemptible men 
 about him, who are incapable of appreciating the 
 worth of such noble and lofty projects, but will fight 
 only for selfish ends. Recognising this, Catiline is 
 driven to the Nihilist vision of destruction, to which 
 he gives utterance as follows : — 
 
 So be it ; if ancient Rome cannot be lifted 
 
 By this my hand, our Rome at least shall perish ! 
 
 Shortly, where shafts of marble now are soaring, 
 
 Shafts of grey smoke shall reel through conflagration. 
 
 Temples and palaces be rolled in ruins, 
 
 And even the lordly Capitol be shattered.. 
 
EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. 35 
 
 And even this negative catastrophe, as he pre- 
 sently perceives, can never be achieved with this 
 herd of wretches and cowards who have gathered 
 round him out of neediness and the desire for 
 phmder. Then, for the first time, revenge seems 
 the only solution : — 
 
 Revenge above all hope, above all dream ! 
 To crush as I by hostile fate am crushed ! 
 Revenge for all this life-long laceration ! 
 
 Thus the baseness of his adherents draws him 
 away step by step from his ideal schemes, drags 
 him on to denial, falsehood, and the thirst for 
 revenge, and finally justifies his fate. 
 
 But, as has been said, there is another cause to 
 be discerned for its justification, and this is Cati- 
 line's personal character. Ibsen,- in fact, has not 
 made his hero an ideal abstraction. He has, no 
 doubt, equipped him with several characteristics 
 which raise him high above the common crowd ; 
 he represents him as bold, valiant, compassionate, 
 and a lover of truth, and above all has given him an 
 ideal aim which makes him superior to his fellows ; 
 but with all this he has given him strong passions 
 of the fiercest type. Ibsen never for a moment 
 doubted that Cicero and Sallust were in the right 
 when they say that Catiline had lived a licentious 
 life and given himself over to the wildest debauchery. 
 There is a hiatus in his nature, an antagonism in 
 himself, which contributes to bring about his doom. 
 
36 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 Thus Catiline at last appeared to Ibsen as a man of 
 grand projects, with a noble desire to carry out 
 something great and good, but without any support 
 from those among whom he lived, and without the 
 purity of character or firmness of will which are 
 indispensable to the man who would attain a great 
 end. For this reason, Ibsen, in the preface to the 
 second edition, could say with perfect justice : 
 " Many things on which my later poems have turned 
 are here dimly shadowed forth — such as the dis- 
 crepancy between our desires and our power of 
 fulfilling them, between will and possibility, between 
 humanity and the individual, between tragedy and 
 comedy." 
 
 In the play this antithesis is not alone in Cati- 
 line's nature ; it is embodied in two women, Aurelia 
 and Furia. They are not so much two women as 
 two elementary principles, who contend around the 
 central figure while they combat each other. It 
 might almost be said that they are his thoughts and 
 feelings which have assumed visible shape. Aurelia, 
 Catiline's wife, is represented as his better self; 
 she, at certain moments, is able to arouse all that 
 is sweet and gentle in his nature. But Furia, the 
 vestal virgin, has far greater power over him ; she 
 it is who fires him to deeds both good and evil. 
 She is at the same time a Valkyrie who beckons him 
 on to fight for the high prize, and an avenging god- 
 dess who drives him to perdition; and she knows 
 what she is doing, for though she loves Catiline, she 
 
EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. 37 
 
 is always meditating how she may be revenged on 
 him for having seduced her sister Silvia, and so 
 having caused her death. 
 
 Still, abstract and didactory as these two figures 
 may seem in this play, we nevertheless discern in 
 them the germ of the two leading female types 
 which constantly stood in the foreground of Ibsen's 
 imagination, and by degrees assumed their place in 
 his poetical work. Aurelia is the representative of 
 gentle love, which sacrifices all and devotes itself 
 wholly ; she is the first sketch of one whole gallery 
 of Ibsen's women, and, as is always the case with 
 the first sketeh, she is rather heavily and extrava- 
 gantly delineated. Her self-devotion, gentleness, 
 and sweetness know no bounds; she is in these 
 respects almost superhuman. The main features of 
 her later-born sister-figures are, however, easily 
 recognisable. 
 
 Not less recognisable is Furia as the prototype of 
 another important, though less numerous, group. 
 She is a wild Valkyrie, planned for great achieve- 
 ment, and as such she already displays the main 
 features of a Hjordis. When she says of her own Ufe : 
 
 Ah me ! this aimless path, this empty traffic, 
 A life as faint as any lamp's last flicker ! — 
 How small a field for all my multitude 
 Of wide ambitions and of hot desires ! 
 Crushed close and tight within these narrow walls, — 
 Here life grows stiff as death, here hope is quenched, 
 - Here daylight sneaks to an untimely close, 
 And not a thought conceived is born an act, 
 
38 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 we distinctly see the figure of Hjordis in the dis- 
 tance. The one difference is that Furia is fettered 
 to the Temple of Vesta, as one of the attendant 
 virgins, while Hjordis is fettered to Gunnar's court, 
 as being his wife ; and when Furia, a moment later, 
 proposes to Catiline to fly with him to a far-away 
 foreign land, there to begin a new life of great deeds 
 and lofty effort, we are irresistibly reminded that 
 Hjordis makes the very same proposition to Sigurd. 
 The inborn thirst for vengeance on the man they 
 love, they have in common, although on dissimilar 
 grounds ; and each at last stabs him to the heart in 
 order to attain among the shades to a union which 
 in life was impossible. 
 
 At the time when Catilina was written, Ibsen, so 
 far as he can remember, had read no dramatic works 
 but those of Holberg and of Oehlenschlaeger. There 
 is something in Catilina which might otherwise 
 suggest Shakespere's tragedies; in the last act 
 especially, we are occasionally led to think of the 
 last act of Julius Ccesar ; but Ibsen then knew 
 Shakespere only by name, so that there can have 
 been no direct influence. He had been compelled 
 to be, to a great extent, his own teacher in his 
 preparations for examination, and it was the same 
 with regard to his early dramatic efforts. He had 
 not as yet learned much from Oehlenschlaeger. All 
 he had directly derived from him was the idea of 
 using the unrhymed five-foot Iambic metre; and in 
 his treatment of it there is much that suggests 
 
EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. 39 
 
 Oehlenschlasger's influence; but the restless and 
 seething vigour of youth finds it impossible to re- 
 main within the limits it has prescribed itself. The 
 Iambic metre is presently too monotonous ; he needs 
 a verse of more lyric stamp ; he deviates into long 
 passages in rhymed Iambics, and at last breaks into 
 noble trochaic strophes of a rolling lyrical type. 
 
 Not less characteristically tumultuous is the scenic 
 treatment of the subject. The three acts take place 
 in no less than nine scenes. The first especially is 
 quite Shakesperian in its frequent changes of back- 
 ground ; there are five, — one, in fact, for each scene. 
 In the second act there is an improvement ; it needs 
 but three ; and the whole third act is performed in 
 one and the same place. It is evident that as the 
 author proceeded he acquired greater practice in 
 stage requirements. 
 
 Yet more singular is the development of the 
 drama. There is no suggestion of a counterplot, 
 properly speaking; not one of Catiline's opponents 
 appears on the stage; consequently there is very 
 little dramatic action, and equally little dramatic 
 conflict. Furia alone, by her passion for revenge, 
 helps to hasten the development; the treachery of 
 Curius is only the ostensible cause of the catas- 
 trophe, and the false conduct of Lentulus is an 
 episode which has no influence whatever on the 
 progress of events. The drama is essentially one 
 of mental conflicts ; it is evolved entirely in Catiline's 
 soul. And yet it has strong dramatic interest 
 
40 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 In the vigour with which the psychological evolution 
 is worked out, from Catiline's self-accusations in 
 the first dialogue, through his deceptions and errors, 
 till madness at last clouds his conceptions — in the 
 vigour with which this is depicted the reader can 
 now discern the gift of the future master in the 
 domain of the psychological drama, in spite of 
 youthful deficiencies and inexperience. 
 
 Ibsen's countrymen know what was the fate in 
 store for Catilina when it had received the finishing 
 touch. Its defects of form were too self-evident for 
 it to find favour in the eyes of either managers or 
 publishers. The managers politely but decisively 
 refused it; and as to the publishers, they named 
 various sums as the price of its production at the 
 author's expense. When, at last, the piece was 
 printed in Christiania, at the cost of a liberal and 
 enthusiastic friend, fortune was not much kinder. 
 In the student world, no doubt, the play aroused 
 some attention and interest ; but the critics spoke of 
 it as immature, and the public were totally indifferent 
 to it. While they crowded to the theatres to see 
 such trifles as, for instance, Til Saeters (At a 
 Highland Cow-house), there was scarcely a soul 
 to buy the promising first-fruits of a poet's pen, 
 who was destined to become the foremost drama- 
 tist of Norway, and one of the most remark- 
 able in all literature. In spite of the opinion of 
 an accepted authority of those days. Professor 
 M. J. Monrad, who replied to the critics and ex- 
 
EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. 41 
 
 pressed his appreciation of the work, not more than 
 thirty copies in all were sold. One of the few 
 persons who had any taste for the book was a 
 huckster; he considered the paper especially suited 
 for wrapping parcels, and during Ibsen's first resi- 
 dence in Christiania this man bought of him and 
 his friend, one evening when their stomachs were as 
 empty as their purses, their whole stock of copies. 
 " For the next few days we did not want for the 
 necessaries of life," says Ibsen laconically. 
 
 The picture which Catilina suggests of Ibsen 
 himself, at this time twenty years of age, is extremely 
 interesting; still, as I have shown, the treatment of 
 the subject in a dramatic form compelled him to 
 depict Catiline as so far unlike himself that we can 
 discern only a few points of resemblance between 
 the author and his hero. It is not in our power to 
 reconstruct a complete image of the young writer 
 by the aid of his Catilina. Other materials must be 
 sought ; utterances of a more personal character are 
 needed — letters, in short, or minor poems. 
 
 It is obvious that during Ibsen's residence in 
 Grimstad he must have written other poems besides 
 the political outcries he alludes to in the preface to 
 Catilina. But hardly any of these early lyrical 
 attempts have ever been printed. Two in the Kris- 
 tiania Post newspaper — one of memorial verses 
 to Oehlenschlaeger — are, so far as I know, all that 
 ever saw the light, and that is but little. Ibsen him- 
 self no longer possesses a line of what he wrote at that 
 
42 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 time. When, in the preface to the reprint of Catilina, 
 he speaks of his pohtical verse, he relies on memory, 
 and cautiously adds, " so far as I can recollect." 
 
 But a singularly happy "concatenation of cir- 
 cumstance" has enabled me to discover that his 
 youthful efforts have not entirely perished. There 
 are indeed a number of them extant, and these 
 serve to fill up in the most instructive way the 
 portrait of the young poet as it is suggested in 
 Catilina. 
 
 They form a collection of twenty-six poems, very 
 neatly copied into a bound volume. One of them 
 is dated 1847, when Ibsen was in his nineteenth 
 year, three are of 1848, thirteen of 1849, and the 
 rest of 1850. They were almost all written in 
 Grimstad. Only the last two or three were com- 
 posed after he had quitted that town. 
 
 We might at first be incUned to believe that 
 such a collection of juvenile poems must be full 
 of literary echoes, especially when we know of 
 his other work that the author did not develop an 
 independent style till a much later period. But in 
 fact these early poems betray much less of literary 
 reminiscence than might be expected. The form 
 is, on the whole, marked by a facility which we 
 should not have looked for from the author of 
 Catilina, but it is not highly characteristic. The 
 matter, on the other hand, certainly is. 
 
 At that time Welhaven was the ruling leader 
 among the lyric poets of the North. His Nyere 
 
EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. 43 
 
 Digte (New Poems), published in 1845, had marked 
 an epoch in the domain both of romance and of 
 the description of Nature. It was the "Ghost 
 ballad" of the Romantic school, with its love of 
 the Middle Ages, but it was also the " Dryad lyric," 
 with its natural symbolism, which in this volume 
 of poems had forced its way to the front. In 
 Ibsen we find the trace of this influence in one 
 place only, namely, in the poems entitled Mbller- 
 guiten (The Lad of the Mill), which is furnished 
 forth, in the manner of the day, with all the 
 romantic paraphernalia of singing nymphs, harping 
 nixies, and the rest. Otherwise Ibsen remained 
 unaffected by this tendency; nay, he consciously 
 set his face against it. In one poem. Til Norges 
 Skjalde (To Norway's Bards), written early in 
 1850, he asks the poets why they rave about 
 remote antiquity, the buried primeval world and 
 its ruined remains ; have they not received the gift 
 of song to devote it 
 
 to the service of men that require 
 To read on the lips of a bard's inspiration 
 The meaning of sorrow and joy and desire ? 
 
 They often sang of the Nature of Norway, but 
 how could they forget her hearts ? In those hearts 
 lay the treasure for Norway's poets to bring to 
 light, since it was their task to give a picture of the 
 life of the people. 
 
 A foreknowledge of his own coming gift seems 
 
44 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 to dawn in this youthful programme of Ibsen's, 
 although it was not indeed in the field of the epic 
 life of the people that it was to be exercised. But, 
 in fact, at that time he made no attempt to write in 
 accordance with his own theories. His poems of the 
 time when he wrote Catilina are all purely subjec- 
 tive and personal — his own moods, his own thoughts 
 and impressions. Of the future satirist hardly any- 
 thing is perceptible ; one slight and feeble effort at 
 the satirical description of a ball, and that is all. 
 
 The keynote of these poems is elegiac rather than 
 satirical. A breath of gentle, dreaming melancholy 
 pervades many of them. The writer is more capti- 
 vated by the silence of night than by the turmoil of 
 day ; he is one of those to whom moonlight is more 
 poetical than sunshine. No less than six of the 
 poems in this collection are in moonlight moods. 
 
 Maaneskinsfart paa Havet (A Moonlight Sail on 
 the Sea), Maaneskinsstenining (A Moonlight Mood), 
 Maaneskinsvandring efter et Bal (A Moonlight Walk 
 after a Dance), such titles are explicit enough. The 
 last-named is of more especial interest as it includes 
 the " motive " of a fine later poem by Ibsen : — 
 
 Hush ! what silence ! from the ball-room sounds the 
 
 voice of mirth no more ; 
 Not a wave of man or music breaks upon the night's calm 
 
 shore. 
 
 Far to west a fleeting moonbeam greets, before the moon 
 
 must go, 
 Earth that sleeps in dream-oblivion under lilies of the snow. 
 
EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. 45 
 
 Ah ! at length the ball is over ; but I see amid the white 
 Shapes that weave the web of memory, one more sylph- 
 like, slim and bright. 
 
 Sleep will wind his arms about me with the setting moon's 
 
 last beam, 
 Then my soul and she shall wander through the garden of 
 
 my dream. 
 
 These lines, it will be seen, supply the leading 
 idea which is worked out in Borte (Away), but it 
 has undergone a characteristic transformation : the 
 quiet " moonlight mood " has become uncanny night, 
 where darkness broods and the night-wind wails. 
 This poem has led Dr. Georg Brandes to observe 
 that this, and other of Ibsen's best verses, show 
 " that once in the struggle for life a lyrical Pegasus 
 had been killed under him." If, indeed, it can be 
 said with truth of the writer of the fourth act of 
 Brand and of the death-scene in the oasis in Peer 
 Gynt that his " lyrical Pegasus " is killed, these 
 youthful elegiac verses, in spite of their imperfec- 
 tions, are sufficient evidence that it was then living. 
 They are the production of a man whose sensitive 
 nature has not yet been hardened in the " adequate 
 heat " of which Ibsen speaks in a later poem, Mindets 
 Magt (The Power of Memory). 
 
 But if he was not yet hardened, his innate ten- 
 dency to reverie had developed itself. In these 
 poems we find none of the social impulses of youth, 
 not a verse in which Ibsen speaks as representing a 
 class or group ; he always says /, not We. He is 
 
46 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 everywhere alone, even among other men. He is 
 always the introspective thinker, to whom the 
 thought is of more value than the reality which 
 has given it birth. He seeks reahty merely to 
 fertilise his own inner life of feeling and intellect ; 
 as soon as this end is accomplished, reality has lost 
 its importance in his eyes. 
 
 When he dwells on the autumn, and joins in the 
 old poetic lamentation over the short duration of 
 summer glories and the departed bloom, he finds 
 comfort in the reflection that there is one flower 
 which survives in all its beauty, and that is memory ; 
 it justifies Ijope in a coming spring. 
 
 Or he dwells on the recollections of spring itself. 
 That, too, is short, but it still lives in memory. So 
 is it with the life of man. The joys of life are like 
 a brief spring-time, but a sad quivering of the 
 heart-strings reminds us of them for long after- 
 wards. 
 
 The streams of melody are an echo of the dreams of 
 flowers and the songs of spring. 
 
 In the political songs the significance of memory 
 in the life of the people is insisted on : it enables 
 the nation to keep its head up under adversity. 
 A people who cannot find the comfort of memory 
 in an honourable past is a most unhappy one. 
 
 He deadens his sorrow at the departure of a 
 friend by throwing the tender light of the hour of 
 parting on every remembrance of their friendship ; 
 
EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. 47 
 
 and yet another poem speaks of memory as the 
 refuge of the lover when his beloved one is lost. 
 
 Like Falk in Kcerlighedens Komedic (The Comedy 
 of Love), he believes far more firmly in the eleva- 
 ting influence of loss and remembrance than in that 
 of joyful possession. That joy must be brief or 
 it palls — that is to say, it ceases to be joy. . As we 
 read all this glorification of memory, we are irre- 
 sistibly reminded of Brand's words — 
 
 Loss is all thy winning gains, 
 Only what is lost remains. 
 
 We see how far back in Ibsen's life this idea 
 had its root, and understand what a deep hold it 
 had taken in his introspective and idealistic nature. 
 
 There are, however, less sweet and sentimental 
 poems in this little collection — poems which show 
 that even in his twentieth year Ibsen had begun 
 to nurse that preference for the gloomy, solemn, 
 and grave side of life which afterwards so strongly 
 tinged his work. It is not moonlight only, but 
 blackest night. For instance, he dwells on the 
 sense of mystery which fills the soul during a storm 
 at night; or he sits on a dreary autumn evening, 
 gazing thoughtfully into the fire while the storm 
 roars outside and the rain beats on the window. 
 He wanders out at nightfall to his favourite haunt 
 — a dark and lonely spot in the forest — and when 
 a storm comes up, and the wind shrieks in unison 
 with the cry of the screech-owls, he is quite in 
 
48 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 his element ; " the wild horror " which comes over 
 him is congenial to him : — 
 
 Beneath the rage of wintry storm 
 
 Joy hath my heart confessed, 
 With Nature's very face and form 
 
 A mirror of my breast. 
 
 And finally he depicts the midnight hour in a 
 graveyard, and drifts from this picture into the old 
 legend of the Dance of Death. The clock strikes 
 twelve from the church-tower, and, as in Goethe's 
 Der Todtentanz and Saint Saen's Danse Macabre, 
 the dead rise from their graves and whirl in a wild 
 maze round and about the churchyard. The mea- 
 sure is beaten by dead feet and rapped out on 
 skulls till the clock strikes one, and the wraiths 
 vanish beneath the tombstones. Thus Ibsen's well- 
 known " affinity with the mysterious " had its origin 
 far back in his early youth. 
 
 It is no less interesting to study his earliest re- 
 flections and meditations. In a poem written when 
 he was twenty and called Tvivl og Haab (Doubt and 
 Hope), he comes forward as a disbeliever in the 
 dogmas of the Church. This in itself, to be sure, 
 is not uncommon; but it is undeniably quite un- 
 common that the doubts of such a youth of twenty 
 should react upon themselves, and that the sceptic 
 should grieve over his own defection. It is seldom 
 that a sceptic of twenty bewails his departed child- 
 hood, and the loss of the childUke nature which sees 
 in faith the path he can no longer find. 
 
EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. 49 
 
 No less rare is it to find a poet of this age — the 
 age of self-confidence and overweening schemes for 
 the future — admitting doubts of his own powers, and 
 giving utterance to them in his verse. In the earliest 
 poem in this collection, Resignation, the writer asks 
 himself whether his dream of being a poet is not 
 perhaps a mere illusion. He seems greatly disposed 
 to reply in the affirmative, and at the end of this 
 examination he sings in a sorrowful strain of the 
 foaming wave which gathers and rolls onward, but 
 at last is dashed against a cliff, and leaves not even 
 a memory behind, for the next wave washes away 
 every trace of it. 
 
 It was with such thoughts and fancies as these 
 that young Ibsen busied himself in his hours of 
 solitude. And when he mixed with other young 
 persons of his own age, he was no less apart from 
 them. He himself tells us that his political enthu- 
 siasm sometimes ran away with him, and led him to 
 say the most reckless things ; but this did not often 
 happen. As a rule, he was more concerned with 
 thinking out his ideas than with uttering them. A 
 lady who was at that time hving at Grimstad speaks 
 of him as going about like a " seven-sealed mystery." 
 His appearance was gloomy and grave, almost wierd. 
 Some of the women of his acquaintance were dis- 
 posed to ask themselves what in the world this 
 strange creature had within him ; others were 
 frankly afraid of him. Nor need this surprise us, 
 
50 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 for it would be difficult to imagine a man more 
 utterly unlike the "nice young man" according to 
 the notions of a country damsel. Imagine him at a 
 ball ! While his companions gave themselves up to 
 pleasure and enjoyment, he would stand meditating 
 on all the sorrow and misfortune which lurked in the 
 background beneath the cheerful surface, wonder- 
 ing how many of the dancers were waltzing only 
 to forget their woes. Indeed, he found a particular 
 charm in dwelling on such images : to him they 
 were at least as important an element in the poetry 
 of the scene as the dancing and merriment.^ 
 
 And again in his lonely corner he wonders, 
 " What is it that animates all these gay and smiling 
 forms ? Was it in the expectation of finding happi- 
 ness and satisfaction that they came hither ? Have 
 they found what they sought, or does this ball-room 
 scene give us a true notion of the drama of human 
 life ? " 
 
 And what is that notion ? Longing, hoping, and 
 disappointment — in these three words ' lEe" life of 
 man is summed up ! 
 
 The man who at so early an age drifts into these 
 reflections at the sight of human festivity has already 
 won a standpoint from which to look on the world 
 from outside ; he is not made to be in it and of it. 
 Nature and experience alike have sealed him as a 
 
 1 An exact account of one part cf the collection entitled Balminder, 
 et Livsfragmeni i Poesi og Prosa (Reminiscences of a Ball, a Fragment 
 from Life, in Prose and Poetry). 
 
EARLY PfiETICAL EFFORTS. 51 
 
 solitary soul. Even if for a moment he should ever 
 feel a desire to mingle in the maze, even though he ' 
 should feel himself attracted by some one in the crowd, 
 he will soon shrink back into himself like the sensitive 
 plant, which furls its leaves at the lightest touch. 
 
 There are erotic passages in his Balminder, but 
 his erotics, too, are all his own. He had already 
 written love-verses ; but they were not addressed 
 to any woman on earth ; they were dedicated to a 
 " dream-face " called up by an unsatisfied and per- 
 haps unattainable craving. Even the features of 
 this face are not borrowed from earthly prototypes. 
 But at this ball he sees a beautiful pair of eyes, 
 and lo ! the ideal is reaHsed. He had of course 
 imagined the woman he could love as just such 
 another. He dances with her, intoxicates himself 
 with long gazing into her clear eyes, and is in the 
 seventh heaven of rapture. " What are the struggles 
 and disappointments of a whole lifetime against 
 such a half-hour as this ? " But even then and 
 there he is a match for it all. 
 
 " Fate ! remove this superabundance of happiness 
 far from me. Let not this hour be profaned by pro- 
 traction. I have found her. What more can I want ? " 
 
 And fate hears him. He learns that she is 
 betrothed, and then she has fulfilled her destiny so 
 far as he is concerned ; she has taught him " to 
 long, to hope, and to be disappointed." She is 
 unnecessary to his further development ; that must 
 be in himself, in his memories. 
 
52 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 Do we not recognise in this development, based 
 on Ibsen's idealistic and anti-realistic nature, Falk's 
 longing for a woman to love ? How characteristic, 
 and how like Falk, is the cry, " Let not this hour be 
 profaned by protraction ! " Such a love as this 
 has hardly any hold on reality. It begins with a 
 dream-ideal ; just comes into touch with reality by 
 the transports of an evening at a ball ; then passes 
 away again into the realm of the ideal as a memory. 
 It is like one of those comets which, in the course 
 of their long wanderings through celestial space, 
 rush for a moment across the earth's orbit to fly off 
 again into infinitude. 
 
 This then is the picture of Henrik Ibsen which 
 we reconstruct from his earliest poems. They can 
 only very incorrectly be regarded as youthful com- 
 positions; for if they reveal any one thing more 
 plainly than another, it is that Ibsen neyerjiad_anyi_ 
 real youth. He had indeed the ideal cravings, the 
 ecstasies and enthusiasms of youth ; but he never 
 knew the happy thoughtlessness which is its peculiar 
 prerogative ; he never was one of those " to whom 
 play is enough " — to use his own expression. 
 
 Still, youth's rich store of possibiHties was his in 
 a rare measure. All the characteristics of genius 
 which he unfolded as a poet are to be found in germ 
 in these early poems. But long waiting and many 
 struggles were to be his portion before they could 
 mature and bloom. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTlAmA (1850-1857.) 
 
 Henrik Ibsen arrived at Christiania in the month 
 of March 1850, to finish his studies for examina- 
 tion. Like every other man who at that time was 
 anxious to get into the University as quickly as 
 possible, he went to the school kept by Heltberg, 
 a crammer, and a very gifted and original teacher, 
 by whom, in the course of a year or two, the raw 
 materials of youth were hammered and moulded 
 into practical student form. Much has been written 
 concerning Heltberg, his school and his methods. 
 Bjornson has immortalised his teacher in a fine poem, 
 and Arne Garborg has given a vivid picture of the 
 school and its master ; ^ and no one who has ever 
 written a biographical notice of Ibsen has omitted to 
 mention that Aasmund Olafsson Vinje and Bjorn- 
 stjerne Bjornson were Ibsen's fellow-students. 
 
 The evidence of all their contemporaries concurs 
 in representing Heltberg's method as won'derfully 
 attractive and inciting. In his opinion Latin meant 
 logic ; and as they laboured through the ponderous 
 
 1 Bjornson, Digie og Sange (Poems and Songs), 2nd edit. p. 154. 
 Arne Garborg, Bondestudentar (Peasant-Students), pp. 77-91. 
 
 S3 
 
54 EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 sentences and involved periods of the Roman classics, 
 he enlarged to his disciples on the laws of thotight 
 itself. Added to this, his instruction was always 
 vivid and striking ; he always had some happy 
 illustration to clear up a grammatical peculiarity or 
 to emphasise an error, and he would do it with so 
 much wit that he often set a whole class laughing. 
 
 That Ibsen profited by such teaching, not merely 
 as a satirist, but as a man, need not be said; still 
 he cannot have gained very much, for his attendance 
 at these classes was all too short. Being older than 
 most of the pupils, and also much poorer, he was 
 obliged to keep his preparation within the narrowest 
 possible limits. After a few months' study he went 
 up for his examination ; that the result under such 
 conditions could not be brilliant is very evident.'- 
 
 But even while he was still at work, he came 
 before the public with a new piece. He found time 
 to set forth his revolutionary tendencies in the form 
 of a second dramatic effort. 
 
 A native of South Jutland, named Harro Harring, 
 had come to Norway in 1849. In his early and 
 very chequered life he had taken part in the Greek 
 struggle for freedom, and in several revolutionary 
 outbreaks. At the beginning of 1850 he brought 
 out a play called Testamentet fra America (The 
 American Will), and as, in the opinion of the 
 
 1 Greek and Mathematics were his weak points. He could not there- 
 fore pass as " unmatriculated," but he subsequently took the degree of 
 Doctor of Philology, hon. causa. Halvorson, Norsk Forfatterleksikon. 
 pts. 22, 23. 
 
EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 55 
 
 authorities, this outstepped the due limits of the 
 freedom of the press, the author was banished from 
 the country by a royal rescript of the 27th of May. 
 On the morning of the 29th, the police entered his 
 dwelling, captured his person, and conducted him 
 on board a steam-ship, where he was treated as a 
 prisoner till the vessel sailed. As soon as the 
 news of this got wind, a meeting to protest was 
 called for the same afternoon at five o'clock. A 
 protest was, in fact, hastily drawn up, and signed 
 on the spot with about a hundred and forty names. 
 One of the persons present, and who signed it, was 
 Henrik Ibsen. His schoolfellow Bjornstjerne l^orn- 
 son did the same. 
 
 On leaving the place of meeting, the whole party 
 proceeded in a compact procession to the residence 
 of the premier town-councillor, and a deputation 
 laid the document before him. The whole assembly 
 then made their way to the quay. The deputation 
 went on board the packet and addressed a few 
 words to Harring. When he first came on deck, 
 he was hailed with three times three cheers, and 
 then there was a cheer for Norway and freedom. 
 Ibsen from first to last was an eager participator in 
 this affair, the only political demonstration in which 
 he ever took part. It was about this time that he 
 wrote his second drama. He took advantage of the 
 Whitsuntide holidays to put on paper a one-act 
 play called Kjaempehojen (The Warrior's Barrow), 
 which was accepted by the theatre at Christiania, 
 
56 EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 and performed on the 26th of September in that 
 year. 
 
 Kjaempehdjen is by no means so interesting a 
 play as Catilina. It is in form and matter a direct 
 outcome of the study of Oehlenschlaeger's Northern 
 tragedies. 
 
 During a raid on the coast of Normandy, a Norse 
 Viking, Audun, is abandoned, dangerously wounded. 
 A maiden named Blanka, who has escaped death at 
 the hands of the fierce Vikings, finds and rescues 
 him. When he has recovered from his wounds, he 
 builds himself a hut, where he dwells as a hermit 
 with his foster-daughter, who has converted him to 
 Christianity. His new faith fills him with aversion 
 for the wild life of the Vikings, and in token that his 
 past career is ended he buries his sword and armour, 
 and raises a barrow over them. Long years after, 
 his son Gandalf comes to Normandy with his fol- 
 lowers, to avenge the death of his father. He is 
 about to kill both Blanka and the recluse ; but the 
 meek and forgiving spirit which breathes in their 
 words makes it hard for him to shed their blood, 
 and in order to keep his vow to be revenged or die, 
 he dedicates himself to death. Hereupon Audun 
 throws ofi" his hermit's frock and explains the situa- 
 tion. Gandalf returns to Norway with Blanka as 
 his bride, but Audun prefers to remain as a recluse 
 till death, and stays behind. 
 
 All these characters have their prototypes in 
 Oehlenschlaeger's tragedies. The old Viking, who 
 
EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 57 
 
 ends his days in holiness on a Southern shore, 
 where he quarrels one fine day with the natives, is 
 a figure which Oehlenschlseger has repeatedly intro- 
 duced. In Vaeringernei Miklagaard (The l>iorma.ns 
 in Constantinople), he appears as the old Syrian 
 hermit, who turns out to be none other than Olaf 
 Trygvason ; and in the second act of Landet fundet 
 og forsvundet (The Land Won and Lost), we find 
 him again as the recluse Quetsalcoalt — the Icelander 
 Bj5rn, who quitted his native land when his lady- 
 love married another. The contrast of Gandalf's 
 Norse roughness and Blanka's Southern sweetness 
 has also had its counterpart in the Vaeringer, in the 
 contrast between Harald Haarderaade and Maria. 
 Blanka is indeed the very double of Maria. Both 
 are children of the South, both admire the strength 
 of the North, each loves a Northern hero, each 
 follows her lover to Norway, and regards it as her 
 mission to exert a softening and pacifying influence 
 over the people among whom it is her lot to live. 
 But Ibsen treats it as a fundamental contrast between 
 Christianity and paganism, while in Oehlenschlseger's 
 play it is that between Greek culture and Northern 
 native power that is chiefly insisted on. 
 
 And, in spite of all this external influence, the 
 conception here elaborated of the Viking age is 
 immeasurably beyond Oehlenschlaeger's, and reveals 
 the future author of Haermae^idene paa Helgeland 
 (The Vikings in Helgeland). These Vikings are 
 fiercer and more violent than their immediate proto- 
 
58 EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 types; they are more completely barbarians, less 
 civilised men. The critics of that day, fettered by 
 Oehlenschlaeger's conception of primaeval Scandi- 
 navia, found fault with them as being too rough 
 and savage. On the whole, however, criticism was 
 kind to the little piece, and the public received it 
 favourably; it was performed three times, which, 
 as theatres went in those days, was a very fair 
 " run." 
 
 The performance of the "Warrior's Barrow" at 
 the Christiania theatre led to Ibsen's being recog- 
 nised there as an author. He at once gave up all 
 notion of devoting himself to study. 
 
 With his friend Schulerud, a law-student, the 
 author of Catilina established himself in a modest 
 quarter of the town. The price he received for his 
 play did not go far, and Schulerud's monthly allow- 
 ance was anything rather than splendid. Neverthe- 
 less this devoted comrade shared it strictly and 
 liberally with his friend. " But it did not suffice 
 to secure them a dinner," says Botten-Hansen, "so 
 they were forced to go without. To keep up 
 appearances in the house, for fear this should be 
 known, they went out at dinner-time, and did not 
 return till an hour at which the people with whom 
 they lodged might conclude that they had done their 
 meal. Then they had coffee and ate bread with it, 
 which had to do duty as dinner. At that time I 
 met Ibsen and his friend almost every day, but 
 cheerful and hearty as they always seemed, they 
 
EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 59 
 
 succeeded in concealing their rare frugality so 
 effectually that for a long time I had no suspicion 
 of it." 1 
 
 This faithful and self-sacrificing friendship has 
 linked Schulerud's name with Ibsen's in the most 
 honourable manner, and the poet has commemorated 
 his gratitude in a handsome tribute in the preface 
 to the second edition of Catilina. He does not 
 seem to have been in any other way remarkable; 
 his intellectual qualities did not rise above the 
 common level; but his fathomless devotion and 
 unhesitating belief in his friend's genius had cer- 
 tainly a most beneficial effect on Ibsen's self-critical 
 and too diffident nature. 
 
 Another lodger in the same house, Theodor 
 Fredrik Abildgaard, a student, exercised a great 
 influence over him. This young fellow had thrown 
 himself heart and soul into the working-men's 
 movement started by Marcus Thrane, an advocate 
 of the revolutionary ideas of 1 848. Abildgaard, who 
 soon became one of the leaders of the movement, 
 initiated both Ibsen and Schulerud into his plots. 
 Ibsen had come to no clear or determined conclu- 
 sion as to the socialistic ideas which formed the 
 basis of the movement, nor could he decisively 
 subscribe to the views of its leaders. Their schemes 
 were indeed too fantastic, not to say childish, and 
 the whole project too indefinite, too immature, and 
 too recklessly planned for Ibsen to join it uncondi- 
 
 1 Biografi af Henri k Ibsen in Illustreret Nyhedsblad, for 1863. 
 
6o EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 tionally. Still it appealed to him, for it meant 
 life and air. He assisted at the meetings held in 
 Abildgaard's rooms, and went about and was seen 
 with him and the other leaders, and he wrote in 
 the paper they issued. 
 
 After a time Abildgaard and Thrane were both 
 apprehended, and their papers seized, including the 
 various contributions to the journal. As there were 
 among these, articles in Ibsen's writing, he was for 
 some time afraid lest he should share his colleagues' 
 fate, although what he had written was not danger- 
 ous and could not have led to his condemnation. 
 However, thanks to the presence of mind of one of 
 the conspirators, he was put to no inconvenience 
 whatever. When the police entered, the editor of 
 the paper simply tossed all the treasonable papers 
 out on the floor, ostentatiously hiding those that 
 were of no consequence. The police were actually 
 misled, and the matter, so far as Ibsen was con- 
 cerned, was at an end. Not, however, as concerned 
 the leaders ; they were condemned to a long im- 
 prisonment with hard labour for their socialist 
 doings. 
 
 Two men may yet be mentioned with whom Ibsen 
 at this time came in contact. These were Paul 
 Botten-Hansen and Aasmund Olafsson Vinje. It 
 was in co-operation with them that, at the New Year, 
 1851, he started a Httle weekly paper, which, from 
 the vignette on its title-page, was soon known by 
 the nickname of Mandeti (The Man). 
 
EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 6l 
 
 Both his colleagues were older than Ibsen. Vinje 
 was thirty-three and Botten-Hansen six-and-twenty. 
 Although these could boast of no literary achieve- 
 ments like Ibsen's, they were at that time his 
 superiors in knowledge and general maturity. 
 Botten-Hansen had already laid the foundations of 
 his extensive acquaintance with foreign Hterature; 
 more especially had he studied "Young Germany" 
 con amore, and he published a series of papers on 
 its writers in the above-named periodical. Vinje 
 was less well-read, but his keen and strongly 
 marked intellect had ripened and grown rich by the 
 thoughts and experience of a chequered life, through 
 a very hard struggle for existence. Ibsen's inter- 
 course and labours in common with these two men 
 undoubtedly exercised a valuable influence on his 
 mental development. 
 
 The model from which " The Man " was imitated 
 was Goldschmidt's Korsaren,^ which had attracted 
 much attention throughout Norway. Nor was the 
 resemblance between the two publications merely 
 external ; there was an agreement in their political 
 views. Both were on the side of the " Opposition ; " 
 and when " The Man " took up the cudgels against 
 an accusation brought against Goldschmidt of not 
 having placed himself at the service of any one idea, 
 it was to a certain extent defending itself. Vinje, 
 in the name of the editors, broke a lance for Gold- 
 
 ' The Corsair, a brilliant and contentious Danish newspaper of the 
 day, edited by a leading novelist, A. M. Goldschmidt. 
 
62 EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 Schmidt against the litUratetirs of the North, who 
 echoed this favourite indictment. It was Gold- 
 schmidt's chief merit, he declared, that he had not 
 attached himself to either of the contending parties ; 
 for affiliation to a party leads to want of independ- 
 ence and to intellectual bondage. Genius is isolation ; 
 it has this in common with the dumb creation, that 
 it does not adapt itself to ordinary men, and it can- 
 not be understood till some time has elapsed. The 
 essay in which Vinje comes forward as an enthusi- 
 astic admirer of Goldschmidt is still remarkable in 
 respect to its view of the relation of the majority to 
 the individual, which afterwards found expression in 
 Ibsen's play En Folkefiende (An Enemy of the 
 People). The reason, however, why Manden took 
 arms alike against the Government and the Opposi- 
 tion was, not that this periodical was intended to hold 
 a position half-way between the extremes on each 
 side, but, on the contrary, because it went much 
 further than the Opposition, and so regarded that 
 party as feeble and colourless. In the young editor 
 of three-and-twenty we see anticipations of "An 
 Enemy of the People," and his notions of home 
 politics were already finding utterance in the satirical 
 form which was a noteworthy feature in his youthful 
 writings. 
 
 Ibsen had come to the capital with his head full 
 of dreams of freedom, and fired with revolutionary 
 zeal. He certainly had hoped to find in this focus 
 of the intellectual life of the North a sympathetic 
 
EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 63 
 
 echo of all which was sounding so loudly in his own 
 soul. His first act was to take part in a political 
 demonstration ; his next was to ally himself with 
 the most radical of Radicals. But, as we have already 
 seen, this friendship did not afford him what he 
 sought. 
 
 Still, the seething unrest of the times could not 
 fail to find utterance in the National Assembly. 
 Antagonism to the Storthing seemed to him worthy 
 of his enthusiasm. It was to him a matter of small 
 moment what the ground of opposition might be ; , 
 the main point was a firm and manly opposition. / 
 From this point of view the opposition to the Stor- 
 thing of 1 85 1 was anything rather than an inspiring 
 theme for an enthusiastic young poet. 
 
 In 1848 there had been for a moment some pro- 
 mise that the political agitation of the time would 
 not pass over the heads of the Opposition party in 
 the Storthing without leaving some mark. But in 
 the period between the closing of the Storthing in 
 1848 and the meeting of the next Storthing in 185 1, 
 many things had happened which were ill-adapted 
 to infuse courage into the Radical party. Peace 
 was restored in Europe and the rebels had been 
 punished. The Opposition in the Norwegian Par- 
 liament of 1 85 1 was the mildest and most submissive 
 imaginable. 
 
 Ibsen's impression of this docility was one of 
 disillusion. For the first time in his life it was 
 clear to him that, in great things as well as small, 
 
64 EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 the ideal and the real were very different. The 
 extinct opposition in the Storthing filled him with 
 scorn ; in his eyes its members showed a con- 
 temptible lack of public spirit; and he thereupon 
 wrote Norma elleren Politikers Kjaerligked Q>iormdL, 
 or a Politician's Love), a musical tragedy in three 
 acts. His first disgust called forth his first satire. 
 Bellini's opera of Norma supplied the motive for 
 this juvenile polemical work ; for the parts of the 
 dramatis personce he substituted political magnates, 
 and then lashed them with scourges of the heaviest 
 calibre. The Opposition as a body were laughed 
 to scorn for their weakness, in the character of 
 Norma, and around her were grouped several 
 members of the Thing, identified by name and 
 stigmatised as fortune-hunters.^ 
 
 His other political contributions to the paper are 
 of less interest. Five of the poems which sub- 
 sequently were included in the only published 
 collection of his verse were here printed in their 
 original form, from which the later one differs in 
 many respects. Several of them, as, for instance, 
 Spilleviaend (The Musicians), Ftigl og Fuglefaenger 
 (Bird and Bird-catcher), and Bergmanden (The 
 Mountaineer), show that his tendency to melan- 
 choly and mystery had increased. 
 
 These poems contributed to Manden lack origi- 
 nality, however. In one cycle of songs called Helge 
 
 1 A full account of the opera, with political explanations, may be 
 found in Norske Forfattere (Norwegian Authors), by H. Jaeger, p. i8g. 
 
EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 65 
 
 Hundingsbane he has taken Oehlenschlaeger's 
 romantic poems, Helge, 18 14, and Nor dens Guder 
 (The Gods of the North), 1 8 19, as his model. In Eu 
 Lordagsaften i Hardanger (A Saturday Evening 
 at Hardanger) he has attempted to give a picture 
 of Northern peasant hfe in octosyllabic verse which 
 betrays the immediate influence of Paladan-Miiller, 
 whose Danserinden (The Dancing-Girl) here appears 
 in Northern attire. Nay, one poem, Svanen (The 
 Swan), shows, both in form and matter, the influence 
 of A. Munch's lines, Hvor i verden jeg guar 
 (Wherever I go). The absolute independence 
 which had distinguished Ibsen's first attempts was 
 evidently on the wane : he was losing it under the 
 influence of literary study. 
 
 At the end of the first half year the periodical 
 was christened Andhrimner — after the cook in 
 Valhalla who prepares the daily food of the Scandi- 
 navian gods, and it became a general weekly review 
 of literature and politics ; but neither in its first nor 
 in its later form had it any great circulation — not so 
 many as a hundred subscribers at any time. It 
 died at the end of the third quarter. 
 
 After residing a year and a half in Christiania, 
 Ibsen's position financially was as insecure as ever, 
 though he had worked hard, not only as a dramatist, 
 but as a lyric poet, political satirist, critic, and 
 journalist. At the same time his writings had ex- 
 cited attention and made him a name ; and when 
 the newly established theatre at Bergen was in need 
 
66 EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 of a young_stage-manager, the choice fell on him, 
 He was appointecT " theatrical poet " at Bergen on 
 the 6th of November 1851, and in the following year 
 the directors voted him a sum of 200 speciesthaler 
 (about ;^45 or $220) as travelling money, that he 
 might spend three months abroad in training him- 
 self in practical stage-management. He, on his 
 part, was to pledge himself on his return to hold the 
 post of " theatrical instructor " for the term of five 
 years. The salary indeed was low enough, only 
 300 sp. th. {£6j or $330) a year; still, it was a 
 small fixed income, and above all, the post he held 
 gave him ample opportunities for the study of the 
 drama. 
 
 It has been said that the dramatic writer is born, 
 not made. " By sheer study a man may become a 
 painter, a sculptor, a musician, but never a dramatic 
 author," says no less an expert than Alexandre 
 Dumas fils, in Un pire prodigue. " A man is one 
 or is not — as he is fair or brown, by no will of his 
 own." 
 
 If this were true, the gift of writing for the stage 
 must form a remarkable exception to the general 
 laws of development, to which all else in hving nature 
 and in the intellectual world is subject ; but in fact 
 these laws admit of no exception. One of these 
 laws is that a faculty is developed by using, but is 
 dormant or degenerates if it is left idle. This law 
 is as inevitably true of dramatic inventiveness as of 
 any other faculty. If it were put to the test, it is 
 
EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 6j 
 
 probably more true of this than of any other branch 
 of hterary work, since skill and technical practice 
 are of greater moment in dramatic writing than in 
 any other class of literary art. 
 
 And this technical skill is not to be acquired by 
 theoretical study : it must be derived from practical 
 experience. The stage-manager must watch each 
 piece from the first rehearsal till it is put on the 
 stage ; he must see it grow on the boards, and sc 
 throw himself into it as to feel actually one with the 
 author; he must picture to himself what will be 
 effective, and what the effect will be, till at lasl 
 comes the great test, of the solution of the problem— 
 the first performance. This, as a rule, brings manj 
 startling surprises. Things which he expected tc 
 " tell " fail flat ; others, of which he thought nothing 
 make their mark ; where only a smile was lookec 
 for, peals of laughter are heard, and vice versa 
 Then he begins to seek the causes, that is to say tc 
 understand and learn. Next time he is wiser ; bu 
 still there is much to surprise him, much to b« 
 learnt. Even when a man has spent his hfe at it, he 
 can never arrive at such mastery as to be able tc 
 predict the effect of the details of a piece with any 
 certainty. He may, however, get nearer and nearei 
 to that point : he may learn to picture to himself the 
 performance of a play while he writes it or reads it. 
 
 The importance of the fact that Henrik Ibser 
 became intimately connected with the stage at ai 
 early age cannot be too much insisted on. But fo 
 
68 EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 this connection he never would have acquired that 
 mastery of dramatic technique which is so justly 
 admired in his plays. He continued to direct 
 various theatres in the North for tei^ears, and 
 rehearsed above a hundred plays. He could have 
 had no better school. Of course they were a very 
 various series of pieces with which he thus became 
 practically acquainted : Shakespere and Holberg, 
 Oehlenschlaeger and Heiberg, his own and Bjorn- 
 son's youthful plays were represented ; but above 
 all was he influenced by the constructive art of the 
 French dramatic writers of the day, especially that 
 of Scribe, though from the literary point of view 
 Scribe's pieces did not greatly appeal to him. At 
 the same time he did not particularly devote himself 
 to study theoretical works on the drama. He read 
 Heiberg's prose writings, especially the well-known 
 essay on the Vatideville ; and during his tour abroad 
 Herman Hettner's book. Das Moderne Drama (The 
 Modern Drama), then just published, fell in his way. 
 This he thought both interesting and helpful; but 
 this was about the whole extent of his theoretical 
 reading. 
 
 In Christiania he had had the opportunity of seeing 
 a sound though not very brilliant school of acting. 
 The DanislLtheatre in the Norwegian capital had at 
 that time some very good artists, and these, as well 
 as some less gifted actors, were held together by a 
 time-honoured artistic tradition. They were all more 
 or less closely connected with the flourishing period 
 
EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 69 
 
 of the Danish stage, dating from the early years of 
 the century ; and although the dramatic art of that 
 day was too ideal in character, it was nevertheless 
 marked by so many admirable qualities that it must 
 certainly have been advantageous to a young author 
 to come under its influence. 
 
 Added to this were the impressions he had gained 
 during his visit as a student to Copenhagen and 
 Dresden, in the summer of 1852. These were of 
 quite a different nature. As it happened, the chief 
 theatre at each of these towns was just then in a 
 critical state of transition. In Copenhagen, as in 
 Dresden, the academical and ideal drama was still 
 in the ascendant, as represented in Denmark by 
 such a director as Ludwig Heiberg, and in Prussia 
 by the elegant and refined Emil Devrient. But in 
 both towns, too, a youthful talent had come to the 
 front on the boards, and laid down a new principle 
 lin art, that of Realism. In Dresden the restless 
 and energetic Pole Dawison led the new school ; at 
 Copenhagen it was the gifted and cultivated Hoedt. 
 Hoedt's artistic watchword was Nature ; Dawison's 
 was Passion; but, dissimilar as they were in tem- 
 perament and artistic instinct, their struggle against 
 the ideal and declamatory school was the same ; and 
 Ibsen, who had the opportunity of seeing them both, 
 thus was first made acquainted with a fresh artistic 
 tendency, corresponding to a new phase of con- 
 temporary dramatic literature. He saw both Hoedt 
 and Dawison play Hamlet, and was especially 
 
70 EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 charmed by Dawison's presentment of the part ; 
 while to Hoedt he was indebted for much enlighten- 
 ment from seeing him act the light-comedy part of 
 Grignon in Scribe's Bataille des Dames. 
 
 The Bergen theatre had no such valuable impres- 
 sions to offer him. Everything there had but just 
 been started from the beginning. The theatre in 
 Bergen was an outcome of the National feeling, which 
 in the forties and fifties had risen to enthusiasm. 
 The treasures of popular poetry brought to light by 
 Asbjornsen and Moe had fired the people with a 
 transport of Nationalism, and Northern art and 
 Northern romance were the result. Painters were 
 to depict Northern nature, musicians were to play 
 or harmonise Northern melodies, poets were to 
 show us the people of the North — of the present or 
 of the past. The Volkslied style was the style of 
 the day, and the Scandinavian peasant its literary 
 ideal. 
 
 The intelligent people of Bergen were in these 
 matters no whit behind the inhabitants of the 
 capital : on the contrary, they were even more 
 zealous in making a display of national enthusiasm. 
 Ladies frequented the public promenades of the 
 town wearing knots of the National colours, and 
 listened eagerly to the strains of Sceterjentens Sondag 
 (The Herd-girl's Sunday). The theatre was crowded 
 with men to admire the fiddling and the Halling- 
 kast (a dance of the natives of Hallingdal) of 
 genuine North-country peasants, and the represen- 
 
EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 71 
 
 tation of spurious theatrical peasants singing in 
 the little vaudeville Til Sceters. 
 
 This National mania fell even on the cosmo- 
 politan author of Catilina, and from the great his- 
 torical struggles of the world which had occupied 
 his mind in his apprentice and student days he now 
 turned exclusively to the history of his own country<^ 
 At the same time he keenly perceived all that was 
 one-sided and superficial in the new impulse, and 
 while he yielded to it, he could not help making 
 fun of certain phenomena to which it gave rise. 
 Before this, in Christiania, he had given utterance 
 in a theatrical critique to his views of the true 
 function of national poetry. " A National writer," 
 he said, " is one who gives his work a predominant 
 note which finds an echo in every mountain and 
 valley, every cliff and strand, but above all in our- 
 selves." 
 
 All the outward demonstrations, to which at that 
 time so much importance was attached, were in his 
 eyes mere trifling and meretricious frippery. But 
 as a poet himself, he was not yet ripe to give ex- 
 pression to this conception ; hence the first drama- 
 tic outcome of the influence on his mind of this 
 Nationalist movement was a strange medley of 
 Realism and National romanticism, which had no 
 firm foothold either in reality or in romance. 
 
 Sancthansnatten (St. John's Eve), which was 
 performed for the first time at Bergen on the 2nd of 
 January 1853, has never been printed, and exists 
 
72 EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 only in a few MS. copies, which are hardly to be 
 got at. I know the piece only from the account 
 given of the performance by T. Blanc,^ and, so far 
 as we may judge from this report, it is not with- 
 out points of resemblance to Shakespere's Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream. A kobold, or Nisse, here 
 plays a part, as protagonist and wire-puller, ana- 
 logous to that of Puck, and elves and kobolds 
 appear on the stage in the more lyric scenes. 
 But notwithstanding this romantic underplot, the 
 real dramatis personce are the ordinary humanity of 
 the time, exactly as they are in Mester og Ldrling 
 (Master and Learner) and several other contem- 
 porary works by Hostrup.^ 
 
 The scene of action is a farm in Thelemark, 
 whither a party of ladies and students have come 
 to keep St. John's Eve. A betrothal is to be cele- 
 brated at the same time, and punch is brought out 
 into the garden, when the Nisse comes and squeezes 
 the juice of a mysterious plant into the punch-bowl. 
 All who drink of the liquor have the gift of no 
 longer being cheated by appearances ; a cloud falls 
 from their eyes, and they see "the hidden power 
 which reigns in the heart's inmost chamber." 
 
 But he that has nothing to ponder upon. 
 Wanders in blindness, and sleeps like a stone. 
 
 As soon as the two pairs of lovers have drunk of 
 the drugged punch, they wander up to the height 
 
 1 Norges fbrste nationale scene. T. Blanc, pp. 138, 150. 
 " Jens Kristian Hostrup, a Danish dramatist, born 1818. 
 
EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 73 
 
 where the St. John's fires are piled, and there 
 the hill opens to the seers : they see the mountain- 
 king surrounded by dancing elves and kobolds, 
 while to prosaic eyes only ordinary maidens and 
 lads are to be seen dancing round a bonfire, and 
 the mountain-king himself is but a member of the 
 committee. Among these work-a-day folk, however, 
 there is a poet, and thus, under the influence of the 
 Nisse's punch, a sort of romantic affinity has its 
 rise. An explanation takes place between the two 
 poetic souls; they "find each other" in spite of 
 the betrothal which had separated them; and the 
 prosaic couple are also matched together. And as, 
 under the same influence, an old injustice, under 
 which the poet-lover had suffered, is also rectified, 
 the piece ends to the satisfaction of all parties. 
 The play was unsuccessful, and in the history of 
 its writer's experience it scarcely is of more import- 
 ance than as an experiment for practice. 
 
 But Ibsen's next work gave brilliant evidence 
 of the educational influence of his practical stage 
 experience. This piece, brought out two years later, 
 showed that his theatrical work had taught him to 
 take advantage of certain principles laid down by 
 Hermann Hettner in his little book. Hettner 
 severely criticises the loosely written "chronicle 
 style" of historical plays, which the admiration of 
 Shakespere's had called into being, and upholds 
 the necessity for strict construction, while he also 
 maintains that a historical drama must at the same 
 
74 EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 time be a " psychological tragedy " of character, u 
 it is ever to be regarded as a serious work of art.i 
 
 Fru Inger til Oestraat (Dame Inger at Oestraat) is 
 such a "tragedy of character," and the construction of 
 the play is so vigorous and so firmly knit that the unity 
 of time and place is preserved throughout. The whole 
 action is worked out in a single night, and in the great 
 hall of Fru Inger's house. In spite of a few some- 
 what lengthy scenes, we find here a dramatic power 
 in the evolution of the plot, which holds our attention 
 from beginning to end, as it were with an iron grip ; 
 and the sense of gloomy uneasiness which underlies 
 the whole piece increases from act to act, from the 
 eerie feeling in the first scene to the breath as from 
 the tomb which parts Eline from Nils Lykke, and 
 to the frenzy in which Fru Inger murders her own 
 son. 
 
 Just such a night of horror is to be found in the 
 episode of Norwegian history which Ibsen chose 
 for dramatic treatment. It was at the time of 
 Norway's deepest degradation. After Sverre's demo- 
 cratic rule, in the thirteenth century, had deprived 
 the Scandinavian nobles of all political importance, 
 during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the 
 families of the old nobility sank into lower and 
 lower depths. The ancient families died out one 
 after another, and their possessions accumulated in 
 fewer hands. Still, increasing riches did not stay 
 their fall; it was gradual but sure, Uke a slow 
 
 1 H. Hettner, Das Moderne Drama, p. 39. 
 
EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 75 
 
 progress of decay.^ "It may be said that the 
 process was in many ways complete when the 
 Reformation first made its way on to Scandinavian 
 soil. After that time Norway was entirely bereft of 
 any superior secular class, and only a few families 
 of the lower nobility survived, who, neither by their 
 wealth nor their political energy, stood in any 
 marked degree above the better peasant class, so 
 that their ancestral dignity was as nothing beyond 
 their own immediate neighbourhood." But even at 
 that time the nobles still formed the only class 
 which could represent the people in the province 
 of politics and on great public occasions; con- 
 sequently the decay of the nobility was equivalent 
 to a paralysis of the whole nation. Even at the 
 beginning of the sixteenth century Norway was 
 more than ever, as Sars puts it, " like a tree deprived 
 of all its branches, or like a drifting wreck." Such 
 similes as these, borrowed from whatever is lifeless 
 and helpless, flow from the pen of our historians 
 whenever they speak of that period. 
 
 As a result of the extinction of their political 
 leaders, all interest in national affairs, all patriotic 
 pride and affection, were at that time unknown in 
 Norway. The last Norwegian barons were Danish 
 or Swedish in their proclivities, according to their 
 personal connections and family alliances ; none 
 were for Norway. Even Knut Alfsson, so highly 
 lauded as a patriot-martyr, was, through his relation- 
 
 ' J. E. Sars, Udsigt over den Norske Historic, v. iii. pp. 212-218, 
 
76 EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 ships and marriage, no more than a tool in the 
 hands of Sweden. The only man who really uses 
 patriotic language, and who seems to feel true 
 indignation at the degradation of his country, is 
 Vincent Lunge. In his letters we find many bitter 
 utterances over the wretchedness of the country 
 and the stultified spirit of the Norse folk. But 
 this solitary patriot was — it is significant to note — 
 not a Norwegian, but a Danish noble who had 
 married into Norway ; moreover, his patriotism was 
 in chief part no more than a becoming dress 
 wherein to wrap his ambition, avarice, and love of 
 power. The rescript -^ which he and the other 
 state-councillors wrung in 1523 from Fredrick I. 
 was no doubt more favourable to the country than 
 that granted ten years earlier by King Christian II., 
 but it was in practice no more than a sheet of 
 parchment, which the king soon set aside. The 
 national state-council still existed indeed, but it 
 was a very feeble institution, incapable of the vital 
 will to play an independent part. Danish magnates 
 established themselves on the soil, bought up the 
 finest districts, secured a title by marriage or other 
 less creditable methods, and ruled or ran riot just 
 as they chose. Law and justice were almost un- 
 known; family feuds and raids, lawless seizure of 
 other men's possessions, pillage, and even petty 
 wars between the more powerful chiefs, were the 
 
 ' Known as a Haandfxstning, from the fact that for lack of a signet 
 the wax-seal received the impression of the royal thumb. 
 
EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 77 
 
 order of the day. Never were such dark times in 
 Norway as these, and, to adopt the old image of 
 a night of four centuries, the beginning of the 
 sixteenth century in Norway may be regarded as 
 midnight. 
 
 It is the very atmosphere of this period which is 
 so wonderfully brought before us in the dark drama 
 which Ibsen unrolls under our eyes, with its para- 
 lysed powers and slanderous plotting, its waning 
 hopes, and passions let loose, its ghostly suggestive- 
 ness and tomb-like horror. 
 
 No wonder that such a subject should have 
 attracted Ibsen's love of the mysterious and the 
 horrible ; no wonder that he has succeeded in giving 
 us a living picture of that period, and in boring for 
 the first time into the depths of his own peculiar 
 nature. 
 
 But the feeling which drew Ibsen to such a theme 
 was nqt-solely parotic. The period of National 
 revival in the first half of this century was less able, 
 perhaps, than any other, to contemplate the age of 
 the Reformation without a pang. The young and 
 tender impulse of patriotism must have felt grief and 
 regret at the thought of that degradation of the 
 Fatherland; and Ibsen, too, must have felt them, 
 as we may clearly discern from his having stamped 
 them on Eline, the most beautiful figure in the 
 drama. The real Ehne did not feel so; nay, 
 scarcely a woman in Norway in her time could have 
 felt so ; but to Ibsen she was the Muse of the piece, 
 
78 EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 since he has made her the representative image of 
 mourning for the fate of the country. It was diffi- 
 cult in the beginning of the nineteenth century for 
 any one to understand the Norwegians of that by- 
 gone time ; their abject state was incomprehensible, 
 and every spark of high-mindedness or patriotism 
 which could be discerned, or even imagined, was hailed 
 with enthusiasm. Thus it came to pass that Knut 
 Alfsson was set up as a National hero and a martyr 
 for his country. A. Munch sang his praises in his 
 "Pictures from North andSouth,"^otherpoets followed 
 suit, and Ibsen opens his play with his name : — 
 
 "Who was Knut Alfsson ? " 
 
 " Norway's last true knight." 
 
 There was in the air a craving to find something 
 to be enthusiastic about, something great and mag- 
 nanimous in the age so lacking in enthusiasm, gran- 
 deur, and dignity; and this craving gave Ibsen the 
 motive for the conception of the heroine of his piece. 
 About her he centres every hope for the resuscita- 
 tion of Norway. He shows her standing by Knut 
 Alfsson's bier, and swearing that her life shall be 
 devoted to avenging the victim's death and win- 
 ning freedom for Norway. From that moment every 
 one, herself included, believes that she is elect to 
 accomplish the deed which had dropped from Knut 
 Alfsson's hands on board Henrik Krummedike's 
 ship. All look to her for the watchword, which 
 she never succeeds in giving them, because she finds 
 
 1 Billederfra Nord og Syd. 
 
EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 79 
 
 herself fettered in such a way that she dares not 
 undertake the task. She has loved Sten Sture, and 
 from her connection with him she has a son who is 
 to be sent to Sweden. This son seals her fate. 
 Every time she thinks she can step forth, her fears 
 for her son hold her back. These fears drive her 
 on to wed the feeble Nils Gyldenlove, and to throw 
 her daughters into the arms of Danish knights. 
 Her love for this child robs her of the trust of her 
 country-folk, draws her into difScult and suspicious 
 situations, and at last leads her to murder her own 
 son, in the belief that he is another who would 
 stand in that son's way. She is a grandly conceived 
 tragical figure, boldly worked out. 
 
 In real life, however, Fru (Lady or Dame) Inger 
 was not so grandly planned a woman. She was 
 the descendant of an old and noble family which 
 had preserved its dignity, and she consequently 
 was the wealthiest landowner in the country. This, 
 and this alone, gives her a right to a place in history. 
 If we study her life, we find no reason to. suppose 
 that patriotic considerations ever affected her con- 
 duct. The motive power of her deeds was of a 
 far lower kind, and seems to have lain principally 
 in an extraordinarily strong instinct for increasing 
 her wealth and her status. We find her, for 
 instance, on one occasion seizing the possessions 
 of a neighbour, and retaining her hold till she is 
 compelled to surrender them. When she gives 
 her daughters in marriage to Danish noblemen, it 
 
So EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 is because she promises herself some advantage 
 from the alliance, these Danes being the most high- 
 born sons-in-law she can meet with. When she 
 takes a convent under her protection and renders 
 it service, she contrives to be richly repaid as the 
 land-owner. Even for a good action she exacts a 
 return; when she affords a refuge to the perse- 
 cuted Chancellor, she accepts from him a large gold 
 ring, a hundred Rhine-gulden, and a large sum 
 in rose-nobles and Hungarian gulden; and after- 
 wards, when she undertakes to avenge the wrongs 
 of the "Dale-junker," it is only because she has 
 persuaded him to promise marriage to one of her 
 daughters, in the hope that he will be made king 
 of Sweden. 
 
 In all this, as in much else, she was no worse 
 than her times, but, on the other hand, no better; 
 and far from reproaching herself for having plighted 
 her daughters to the foreign rulers of Norway, she 
 was, on the contrary, on the best possible terms with 
 her sons-in-law, and allowed herself to be guided 
 on every occasion by the eldest and most important 
 of them, Vincent Lunge, whom, after Nils Gylden- 
 love's death, she promoted to be head of the family. 
 From such intractable materials did Ibsen's genius, 
 under the patriotic impetus of his time, build up the 
 noble, tragic figure which is now so familiar to his 
 countrymen. 
 
 However, it was not until after the production of 
 Ibsen's drama that so much light was thrown by 
 
history on the person of " Inger Ottesdatter ; " and 
 although certain characteristic features were even 
 then known, she was as yet an enigma which left 
 ample room for guess-work in its elucidation. The 
 way in which Ibsen accounts for her actions, by mak- 
 ing the " Dalejunker " her illegitimate son by Sten 
 Sture, is historically as daring as poetically it is a 
 stroke of genius. It is well known that this was not 
 the case. It is as certain that the " Dalejunker" was 
 the son of a serf, as that Fru Inger and Vincent 
 Lunge both believed in his claims, and attached 
 themselves to him because there was just then a 
 rumour abroad that Gustav Vasa was dead. But 
 Ibsen was boldly independent of all facts, and what 
 his drama lost in historical accuracy he has more 
 than made up for in tragic power. It is the 
 deep and desperate conflict in Inger's soul between 
 maternal love and her love of her country which 
 makes her the grand tragic figure that she is. It 
 was by this poetical transmutation of history that 
 Ibsen won a great poetical triumph. 
 
 Nor has he used less freedom in his treatment of 
 the two characters which, next to Fru Inger herself, 
 are the most important in the drama, Eline and Nils 
 Lykke. The fact that Nils Lykke was the lover 
 both of Eline and her sister Lucia is the only one 
 to which the poet has been faithful; otherwise he 
 has altered everything relating to them. 
 
 In 1528 the real Nils Lykke was married to Eline 
 Gyldenlove, but she died at the end of four years. 
 
82 EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 leaving him two children. After some little time he 
 fell in love with his sister-in-law, Lucia, but their 
 union was strongly opposed by the family, because 
 public opinion at that time regarded the marriage 
 of a man with his sister-in-law as criminal. The 
 entreaties alike of Nils Lykke and of Lucia were in 
 vain, and when an illegitimate son was born to them, 
 the hapless Nils was taken captive, sentenced, and 
 murdered in prison in the year of our Lord iS3S- 
 
 Ibsen either did not see the possible plot which 
 lies in this love-story, or he did not choose to turn it 
 to account. He antedates Lucia's love affair, so that 
 Eline becomes Nils Lykke's second love; thus he 
 has altered their relative position, making them 
 stand to each other in the same relation as Furia 
 and Catiline. Like Furia, Eline loves the man who 
 has caused her sister's death, and hates Lucia's 
 seducer without knowing that they are one and the 
 same ; and, like Catiline, Nils Lykke in Ibsen's play 
 has been wild and reckless, not keeping any account 
 of a love affair more or less. But here the resem- 
 blance ends. Nils Lykke's diplomatic craftiness is 
 as unlike Catiline's blind ferocity and rage as Kline's 
 self-sacrifice is the opposite of Furia's thirst for 
 revenge. Only the essentials of the situation have 
 been resuscitated by Ibsen to be the under-plot of 
 his play, and not the characters of the persons con- 
 cerned.^ 
 
 ^ Hence, when Braades compares Catiline and. Nils Lykke as Ibsen 
 has depicted them, and says, "That nothing should bewaming to the 
 
EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 83 
 
 As may be seen, Ibsen has handled historical facts 
 very freely throughout. He has thus condemned 
 himself in the opinion of Hettner, who lays it down 
 that historical tragedy must never tamper with his- 
 tory. The words in which Ibsen, in a postscript to 
 Catilina, sets forth his attitude towards historical 
 truth may be quoted and applied with double force 
 to Fru Inger til Oestraat. In that postscript he says : 
 " The historical element is utilised only as the outer 
 clothing or vehicle of the ideas embodied in the 
 drama." But he adds very justly, " For having made 
 use of the names of historical personages, who, as 
 they appear on the stage, differ in character and in 
 other respects from the originals as known to his- 
 tory, the author hopes to be forgiven ; aU the more, 
 since these names are hardly so important as to 
 introduce any disturbing element when we find them 
 in circumstances for which there is no authority in 
 history." 
 
 To Ibsen as a dramatist, in short, history was at 
 this time no more to be reckoned with than reality 
 had been to Ibsen as a lyric poet ; it was no, 
 more than a point of solid ground whence he set 
 forth on a voyage in the world of his thoughts and 
 fancies. j 
 
 From the period of the Reformation Ibsen turned 
 to the legendary age of the Sagas. " But the 
 
 resemblance, the poet has borrowed the leading motive from Catilina" 
 it seems to me that he goes too far. Aesthetiske Studier, p. 245. 
 Vasenius too has uplifted his voice against this parallel of Catiline and 
 Nils Lykke. Ibsen's Dramatiske Digtning, p. 127, 
 
84 EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 King's Sagas and the historical records generally 
 of that remote period did not captivate me," he says 
 in the preface to the second edition of Gildet paa 
 Solhaug (The Feasting at Solhaug). " I could at 
 that time make no capital of the struggles between 
 kings and chiefs, between the king's adherents and 
 the dependents of noble families ; they were useless 
 for my poetical purposes until a later date." Then 
 he accidentally came across N. M. Petersen's His- 
 toriske fortaellinger oni Islaendernes faerd hjemme og 
 ude (Historical Tales of the Voyages of the Icelanders 
 at' Home and Abroad), and his study of this clever 
 work, with a translation of a few of the old Icelandic 
 family sagas, was an important event. " From these 
 family chronicles," he writes further on in this pre- 
 face, " with their changeful relations between man 
 and man, between woman and woman, but above all 
 between the different groups of human beings, there 
 flashed upon me a more personal, full, and living 
 sense of the largeness of life ; out of my inter- 
 course with all these strongly-individualised figures 
 of men and women there shot into my brain the 
 first rough, vague sketch for Haerinae7tdene paa 
 Helgeland" (The Warriors at Helgeland). 
 
 How, subsequently, the details grew up in his 
 mind he no longer remembers ; but the two female 
 figures, Hjordis and Dagny, were to be prominent 
 in it, "and a great feasting, with distinct and im- 
 portant scenes. But many circumstances inter- 
 vened, chiefly of a personal kind, and these were 
 
EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIAN lA. 85 
 
 probably the most decisive. Still I am glad to be- 
 lieve that it was not without purpose that I turned 
 my attention just then to Landstad's collection of 
 Norske Folkeviser (Norwegian Popular Songs), which 
 had appeared a few years before.^ The frame of 
 mind in which I was at the time was more easily 
 attuned to the romances of the Middle Ages than to 
 the strong action of the legendary tales, to the verse 
 form than to prose style, to the musical language of 
 the heroic ballads than to that which is characteristic 
 of the Sagas." 
 
 From these words it is not difficult to discern 
 what the moods were which stood between Ibsen 
 and the Sagas, which exchanged Sigurd the Viking 
 for Gudmund the Minstrel, Dagny, the faithful wife, 
 for the young love-sick Signe, and the first sketch 
 of the tragedy Haermaendene paa Helgeland for the 
 lyrical romantic drama Gildet paa Solhaug (The 
 Feasting at Solhaug — hterally the Sunhills). But 
 besides this, we have some poems by Ibsen at this 
 date which throw fight on this frame of mind. One, 
 Markblomster og Potteplanter (Wild-flowers and 
 Pot-plants), begins with these words : — 
 
 Your taste I cannot comprehend, 
 
 Nor what afflicts your eyes ! 
 No beauty she, believe me, friend, 
 
 Nor even over-wise. 
 
 1 These were written in the dialect of the peasants from whom M.B, 
 Landstad had heard them. 
 
86 EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 And ends as follows : — 
 
 Good argument though reason yields, 
 
 I care not how you scold ; 
 She is a wild-flower of the fields, 
 
 And sixteen summers old. 
 
 And the next poem in the collection, En Fuglevise 
 (A Bird's Song), is pitched in the same key which 
 dominates the utterances of Signe's and Gudmund's 
 love : — 
 
 I painted poetic pictures 
 
 In hues that sparkled and glistened ; 
 
 Two brown eyes that were shining 
 Laughed and listened. 
 
 It was beyond a doubt under the influence of these . 
 brown eyes that the " Feasting at Solhaug " was 
 written. For this reason the piece is the freshest 
 and happiest of Ibsen's works. Even here, indeed, 
 threatening clouds darken the sky; but they dis- 
 perse without doing any mischief; no serious dis- 
 cord arises, and the whole closes in a full major 
 chord. Everything, and not merely the rhythmical 
 style of the piece, is, to use Ibsen's words in the 
 preface, " fanned by a light summer breeze." 
 
 "The Feasting at Solhaug" was a success. It 
 was acted to a crowded house and received with 
 vehement applause. At the end of the performance 
 the author and actors were recalled again and again. 
 " Later in the evening an orchestra, followed by a 
 large crowd, played a serenade under my window. 
 
EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 87 
 
 I almost think that I allowed myself to be tempted 
 into making a sort of speech to the assembly ; at any 
 rate, I am sure I felt very happy." ^ The piece was 
 not only performed six times running, a wonderful 
 run for a theatre in so small a place as Bergen, but 
 it was frequently repeated at intervals, and made 
 Ibsen's name known for the first time to a wide 
 circle, since it was produced not only at Christiania, 
 but also at Copenhagen and Stockholm. 
 
 But in proportion as theatre-goers were favour- 
 able to the drama the critics were antagonistic. Ten 
 years before this, Henrik Hertz, in his play Sveiid 
 Dyrings Hus, had made use of the rhythm of the 
 Danish heroic ballad ; and now, when Ibsen had in 
 the same way borrowed the measure of the Norse 
 popular ballad, every one was ready to accuse him 
 of plagiarism from Hertz. At the first performance 
 in Christiania certain newspaper critiques had en- 
 deavoured to point out parallel passages, and when 
 the piece became known in Denmark it fared even 
 worse. It was neither more nor less than "an 
 attempt in every respect inferior to its model, Svend 
 Dyrings Hus ; " "it was nothing else than a colour- 
 less imitation of the Hertzian drama ; " " it was a 
 bad Norwegian copy of a fine Danish original," and 
 so forth. That such a verdict was utterly super- 
 ficial and misleading has been elaborately shown by 
 Vasenius in his essay on the subject.^ The Swedish 
 
 1 Preface to second edition of Gildet paa Solhaug. 
 
 2 Henrik Ibsen's Dramatiska Diktning, pp. 76-112. 
 
88 EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 critic dissects both pieces, points out incidentally 
 various errors of dramatic construction in Hertz's 
 work, and comes to the conclusion that the " Feasting 
 at Solhaug " is, theatrically, a far better play than its 
 supposed model — a conclusion against which no well- 
 founded objection can be raised. But not satisfied 
 with this, he compares the motives and personages 
 of the two dramas, and easily demonstrates that 
 they have no relationship whatever. Any one who 
 brings acumen to bear on the question will at once 
 perceive that any attempt to represent Gildet paa 
 Solhaug as an imitation of Svend Dyj'ings Hus is 
 impossible, save on condition of overlooking the lead- 
 ing motive and principal figures of Ibsen's work. 
 
 The story of Hertz's play turns on the unfortunate 
 application by the Knight Stig of certain mystical 
 runes, and the momentous results to Ragnhild. 
 Subsidiary to this leading motive are three others : 
 (i.) The cruelty of Guldborg to her step-children, 
 whose mother cannot rest in her grave, but hovers, 
 a despairing ghost, beholding all that befalls them ; 
 (2.) Stig's love for Regisse ; and (3.) Tage Bolt's 
 courtship of Ragnhild. 
 
 In Ibsen's piece we find no runes, nor any corre- 
 sponding mysterious power. The love of Margit 
 for Gudmund Alfsson has no supernatviral element 
 whatever. Its beginnings and growth are accounted 
 for in the most natural way in the world. Nor are 
 there in Ibsen's piece any personages answering to 
 the cruel step-mother or the ghost. On the other 
 
EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 89 
 
 hand, there is, no doubt, a certain resemblance be- 
 tween the Knight Stig and Gudmund Alfsson in 
 their relations to the two sisters. Stig and Gudmund 
 alike are loved by both sisters and scorn one ; but 
 such a predicament is common in all literature, and 
 too unimportant to be made the subject of a com- 
 parison. If a charge of plagiarism is to be based 
 on such a resemblance as this, we shall be led to 
 the wildest extremes. Finally, there is a likeness 
 between Tage Bolt's part in the plot of the Danish 
 piece and Knut Gjsesling's in the Norwegian play. 
 Tage and Knut both court one of the sisters, and 
 each fails in his suit — under very different circum- 
 stances, to be sure — from the fact that the sister in 
 question loves, in one case Stig, and in the other, 
 Gudmund Alfsson. 
 
 Each revenges himself by a night-attack on the 
 homestead, and both are finally overpowered and 
 taken captive. Even if it be admitted that Hertz's 
 play did, in this particular, offer a suggestion to 
 Ibsen, this minor action is really not enough to 
 degrade his play to the level of a mere imitation ; 
 above all, when the leading motive is totally different. 
 
 The principal action in Gildet paa Solhaug has 
 in fact no resemblance whatever to that of Svend 
 Dyrings Hus ; it is Margit's love for Gudmund. 
 That this love has neither its origin nor its growth 
 in any supernatural element has already been ob- 
 served. Nor, on the other hand, is it an essential 
 feature that it is love scorned, though this of itself 
 
90 EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 distinguishes it from Ragnhild's. Margit always 
 believes that Gudmund would love her if she were 
 free : her love is characterised as that of a married 
 woman for a stranger. On this alone does the 
 conflict, the agonism of the piece depend ; and any 
 endeavour to treat this as a plagiarism from Svend 
 Dyrings Htis must necessarily fail, especially after 
 Ibsen's delightful and satisfactory account of theorigin 
 of his piece in the preface to the second edition. 
 
 We have yet to consider the resemblance of form : 
 the adoption of the rhythm of the heroic ballads. 
 It is not improbable that Hertz's play may have 
 suggested this to Ibsen. Ibsen, however, denies it 
 in the preface so often quoted ; and how little he 
 himself can have been conscious, as he wrote the 
 drama, of owing anything to Hertz in this or any 
 other respect, is best proved by the fact that within 
 two months of producing Gildet paa Solhaughs: put 
 Svend Dyrings Hus on the Bergen stage. Ibsen's 
 piece was performed for the first time on the 2nd 
 of January 1856; Hertz's followed on the 24th of 
 February. 
 
 Ibsen asserts that his study of Landstad's Folke- 
 viser amply accounts for the form in which he casts 
 his play ; and if we read his little article written in 
 the following year on the heroic ballad and its 
 influence on poetry,^ and see with what fervour he 
 had at that time taken up this class of poem, and 
 
 1 Om kjaempevisen og dens betydningfor Kunstfoesien, in the news- 
 paper Illustreret NyhedsUad, 1857, Nos. 19-20. 
 
EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 91 
 
 how important a part it was destined, in his opinion, 
 to play in poetic art, this explanation seems highly 
 plausible. " The day will come," Ibsen then wrote,! 
 " when our National poets will study ballad-writing, 
 as an inexhaustible gold-mine. Refined and restored 
 to its primitive purity, and elevated by art, it will 
 then strike root among the people." As a dramatic 
 writer he preferred the ballad to the Saga . " The 
 Saga," he writes, "is wholly and purely epic: in 
 the heroic ballad the lyric element exists, under a 
 different qspect, no doubt, to that which it wears in 
 the drama ; still it is there ; and the dramatic poet 
 who seeks his material in these ballads need not 
 modify it to any such extent as that which he 
 borrows from the Sagas. This is an important 
 advantage, which enables the poet to adopt into his 
 work far more intimately and accurately the reflec- 
 tion of the times and incidents he is depicting ; he 
 may thus, if otherwise capable, set his hero before 
 the spectator exactly as he himself knows him 
 from the narrative ballad. Added to this, the facile 
 rhythm of the old ballad-verse allows of many 
 liberties which are of immense advantage in the 
 dialogue form of the drama ; hence there can be no 
 question that this poetic fount sooner or later will 
 be extensively used by those future dramatists who 
 continue to build on the foundations laid by Oehlen- 
 schlaeger. The national poetry of the North began 
 with the Sagas; now it is the turn of the heroic ballad." 
 Ibsen's next play was again worked out in the 
 
92 EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 spirit and style of the heroic ballad — 0/qf Lilje^ 
 krans. In romantic feeling and tone it excels Gildet 
 paa Solhaug, but in dramatic solidity and power it 
 is not to be compared with it. 
 
 The plot of this three-act drama, never yet pub- 
 blished, is as follows : — ■ 
 
 Dame Kirsten Liljekrans and her neighbour Arne 
 fra Guldvik have agreed to put an end to a long- 
 standing feud between their families, and to seal the 
 treaty of peace and reconciliation, Arne's daughter 
 Ingeborg is betrothed to Olaf, Kirsten's son. Both 
 the parents are very eager for the marriage. Arne, 
 an ambitious peasant owner, is anxious to ally 
 himself with so noble a family as that of Liljekrans. 
 Dame Kirsten hopes to strengthen her failing for- 
 tunes by the help of the wealth of Guldvik. Shortly 
 before the wedding, however, Olaf goes up into the 
 highlands, and there, in one of the mountain gorges, 
 he meets Alfhild, a young girl who makes so deep 
 an impression on him that he forgets his betrothed 
 and everything else, and only wishes that she should 
 come with him and become his wife. Alfhild is a 
 complete child of Nature. The dale in which she has 
 grown up in company with her father, Thorgeir the 
 fiddler, is deserted ; no one else has lived there since 
 the Black Death carried off all the other inhabitants, 
 and she herself has never been out of it. She goes 
 with Olaf in sheer glee at the new life she is to see ; 
 but no sooner have they come down to the Bygd 
 (parish precincts), than Olaf remembers his former 
 
EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 93 
 
 pledges and, at his mother's advice, leaves Alfhild to 
 her fate. Beside herself with grief and despair, the girl 
 sets fire to the house where the wedding is held, and 
 flies back to her native valley, while the bride makes 
 her escape with Hemming, a man in her father's ser- 
 vice, whom she prefers to Olaf. Alfhild is pursued by 
 Dame Kirsten's henchmen, seized, and condemned to 
 die on the spot. The sentence is to be executed forth- 
 with, unless " a man of blameless repute will come 
 forward to declare her innocence, and proclaim his 
 willingness to marry her." At the last moment Olaf 
 Liljekrans appears, and while bewailing his past 
 weakness, he announces that he will release her and 
 marry her. Dame Kirsten at last gives her consent, 
 on learning that Alfhild is the owner of a rich and 
 uninhabited dale. Ingeborg and Hemming are also 
 forgiven and blest by Arne.-' 
 
 There is a well-known ballad of the same name 
 as Ibsen's piece.^ The hero is betrothed as in the 
 play, and his marriage is soon to be celebrated. 
 He is met by elves who try to tempt him away, 
 but he resists their wiles and refuses to be inti- 
 midated by their threats. To punish him, they beat 
 him so mercilessly that he dies soon after his return 
 home. Some passages in the drama refer to this 
 ballad; indeed, some words are actually borrowed 
 from its verses. The first motive of Fru Kirsten 
 
 1 A fuller account of this play is to be found in a article by H. 
 Jaeger on Henrik Ibsen's Olaf Liljekrans Nyttidsskrift, vol. vi, pp. 
 76-103. 
 
 2 Landstad's Norske Folkeviser, p. 355. 
 
94 EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 is also probably derived from the old legend, for 
 Olaf's mother plays a similar part to Dame Kirsten 
 at the beginning of the piece ; and finally, Olaf's 
 dazed and bewitched condition in the first act must be 
 regarded as suggested by the ballad. But here all 
 resemblance ceases. In the development of the action 
 and the characters they have nothing in common. 
 
 Nor, again, can it be the old, ballad which sowed 
 the seed of the drama, for it had begun to germinate 
 and bud before the heroic ballad had gained its 
 hold on the writer's mind, and this is why the 
 progress of the action remained so little affected 
 by it. The ballad gave the play its name and the 
 figure of the hero ; still, the hero is not on the 
 whole the most important figure in the drama ; this is 
 Alfhild, who was, in fact, the first-born of them all. 
 
 This young girl, whose home is a mountain 
 valley where the inhabitants all perished when 
 the great sickness visited the district, is indeed 
 none other than Justedalsrypa^ as she is described 
 in the Saga which gave Ibsen the first hint of his 
 drama. So long ago as in the year when he had 
 written Catilina, he had formed a project for putting 
 the story of Jzistedalsrypa into form, and set to 
 work on it at once ; but he laid it aside when he 
 had finished only the two first acts. The MS. 
 of 1850 is still extant; it bears the title: Rypen i 
 
 1 Jusiedalsrypa, literally the Ptarmigan of Justedal. This story of a 
 maiden left alone in a valley to grow up utterly wild is given by A. 
 Faye, Norske Folkesagn, 2nd edit., p, 129. 
 
EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 95 
 
 Justedal, "The Ptarmigan of Justedal, a National 
 Drama in four acts." The heroine is the very same 
 as Alfhild in Olaf Liljekrans, and even bears the 
 same name; indeed, it would seem that the action 
 was intended to be worked out on the same lines 
 as in the finished play. 
 
 With Olaf Liljekrans Ibsen's apprentice years 
 at Bergen came to an end ; it was the last piece 
 he wrote during his managership there. It 
 marks the close, as Sancthansnatten marked the 
 beginning, of a period, and there is a certain re- 
 semblance between the two pieces. A certain 
 timidity, want of grip, and of logical sequence is 
 discernible in both, due to the fact that they stand 
 each at the turning-point of a stage of Ibsen's 
 development. In Sancthansnatten we see the 
 dawning influence of popular legendary romance, 
 and in Olaf Liljekrans that influence is already on 
 the wane. Just as Sancthansnatten was a forecast 
 of his apprehension of the popular ballad, so an 
 aesthetic essay followed immediately on Olaf Lilje- 
 krans. This was the above-mentioned article : 
 Om kjaempevisen, ogdens bedytningfor den Nationale 
 Kunstpoesie (The Heroic Ballad and its Influence 
 on Poetical Art). We saw in the passage above 
 quoted (ante, p. 90) what importance Ibsen ascribed 
 to that influence ; but he was less strong in practice 
 than in theory. In Olaf Liljekrans we see the 
 analytical solution of romanticism in full activity. 
 
 So far as the form is concerned, this process of 
 
96 EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 decrystallisation is obvious at the first glance. 
 Verse and prose contend for the preference, and 
 here we have not the lyrical passages alone written 
 in verse, as in the " Feasting at Solhaug." Quite 
 common-place passages occur in metrical form, while, 
 on the other hand, very romantic love-scenes be- 
 tween the chief personages are to be spoken in 
 prose. The absence of consistency in the psycho- 
 logical development is if possible even greater. 
 
 Both Olaf and Alfhild are characterised by a 
 singular variability of mood; at one moment they 
 are highly romantic, at the next they are quite sane 
 and practical. For instance, in the first act, Olaf 
 speaks and thinks so that it is easy to believe that 
 Alfhild is a real elf who has bewitched him, and 
 not an ordinary mortal; but no sooner is he down 
 in the village once more, than his romantic mood 
 has changed, and he yields to his mother's work- 
 a-day, common-sense arguments. 
 
 It is the same with Alfhild. After she has set 
 fire to the house, a lofty tone of romance seems 
 to carry her away; she speaks with "a strong 
 and increasing expression of frenzy," as the stage- 
 directions tell us ; but as soon as she is^a prisoner, 
 and put on her trial in the presence of Fru Kirsten, 
 her conduct is quiet, self-controlled, and normal. 
 Similar sudden and unfounded changes frequently 
 recur in the piece. Romance is no longer the 
 inmost sentiment of the drama : it exists only in 
 a series of superficial effects. 
 
EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 97 
 
 And if, finally, we examine the fundamental idea 
 of the piece, again we find a decrystallisation. It 
 is, in fact, the struggle of romance and reality. In 
 Olaf these contending aspects of life exist as 
 distinct antagonistic elements. Under Alfhild's 
 influence, he sees the romantic side of everything; 
 under his mother's, he sees things as they are. 
 Alfhild is diflFerently constituted; she is the very 
 incarnation of the romantic; and the antagonism 
 which in Olaf is a part of his being, to her is a 
 merely external circumstance. She shows us the 
 struggle of romanticism with hard reality, and the 
 defeats she suffers in the strife are so many 
 triumphs for reality. But Ibsen's heart still clings 
 fondly to romance, and it is with bitter reluctance 
 that he allows it to be the weaker. 
 
 Olaf Liljekrans was only twice performed. Ibsen 
 himself was ill-satisfied with the piece; he never 
 allowed it to be printed, and ■ some years after he 
 even attempted to work it up for a romantic opera. 
 He completed the first act, and set it aside for a few 
 years; then he began the second act, and sent a 
 copy of the piece to Udbye, the composer, who was 
 ready to write the music; but almost immediately 
 on this the whole thing fell through.^ 
 
 The fact of the matter was, that from the stage 
 which Ibsen had reached when he wrote Olaf Lilje- 
 
 ' The original MS. of 1859 is in private hands in Christiania. The 
 copy forwarded to Udbye belongs to the Scientific Society of Trond- 
 hjem, with Ibsen's letter to Udbye dated July 18, 1861, and a report 
 of what occurred between the poet and the musician. 
 
 G 
 
98 EARLY YEARS IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 kra?is there was no way back to romance. Everything 
 pointed forward to fresh fields and new prospects. 
 One phase of development was closed ; another must 
 now begin. The heroic ballad had nothing more to 
 yield him ; it was now the turn of the Saga. 
 
 Meanwhile the five years for which he had bound 
 himself to the theatre at Bergen had also come to an 
 end. They had been five fruitful years of appren- 
 ticeship to the dramatic craft and an important 
 period of his development. Romanticism had, so to 
 speak, evolved a new ferment in his seething spirit. 
 The apprenticeship and the process of fermentation 
 were alike over; he was now master of his own 
 art, and his brain had settled and cleared, at any 
 rate for a time. 
 
 But this rest and clearness were not to be of 
 any long duration ; fresh antagonisms, fresh doubts, 
 fresh fermentations were awaiting him in altered 
 circumstances. 
 
 A new appointment, that of Director of the 
 Norwegian theatre at Christiania, was open to him ; 
 and the town which had been the scene of his 
 first struggle for existence in his youth was, during 
 the next seven years, to witness the striving of the 
 man to secure a firm position as a poet. He left 
 Bergen in the summer of 1857, and only returned for 
 a short visit in the following year, to be married to 
 the woman to whom, after years of life together, 
 through joy and sorrow, he dedicated the beautiful 
 Xines called Tak (Thanks). 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA (1858-1864). 
 
 When Ibsen settled again in Christiania, he brought 
 with him the beginning of a new drama. The im- 
 pressions and pictures which the study of Icelandic 
 Sagas had left on his mind still occupied his fancy, 
 and had already, before he left Bergen, assumed a 
 dramatic and psychological form. 
 
 One thing only was at first not quite clear to 
 him, namely, the style he should adopt for writing 
 the legendary drama. In his article on the heroic 
 ballad he dwells at some length on this question. 
 
 So much was evident, that he could certainly 
 not adopt the form used by Oehlenschlseger. " It 
 will certainly be obvious at once," he writes, " that 
 the iambic verse of five feet is by no means the 
 best fitted for the treatment of the antique Scandi- 
 navian legends. It is foreign to the spirit of our 
 rhythm, and national subjects can only be adequately 
 treated in a national form." 
 
 Oehlenschlseger, however, had experimented in 
 
 another form, that of the Greek tragedy. Might 
 
 not this be the best ? 
 
 99 
 
100 THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA . 
 
 "Although the actual writing of the Sagas was 
 effected within the Christian era," Ibsen says in 
 another part of the essay, " the poetry is essentially 
 pagan ; hence the material is more suitably treated 
 in the antique Greek style than in what may be 
 termed the Christian style. For this reason Oeh- 
 lenschlseger is certainly more successful in his 
 Balders Dbd (The Death of Balder) than in his 
 other dramatic works." 
 
 According to Botten-Hansen's biography, Ibsen 
 began his Haermaendene paa Helgeland'^ (The War- 
 riors at Helgeland) in verse form, and in that case 
 he undoubtedly intended to carry it out on the Greek 
 model. A Northern tragedy in the Greek style : 
 this is probably how he formulated the problem. 
 But he had not got on far before he began to have 
 doubts. Even while writing his essay on the heroic 
 ballad he had perceived that there was yet another 
 possible form in which the problem might be solved. 
 ^'Haakon yarl in prose might, from Oehlenschlseger's 
 pen, have been not less poetical than in verse," he there 
 wrote ; and that by " prose " he meant the original 
 style of the Sagas may be regarded as certain. 
 
 Only the year before, Bjornson had written Mellem 
 Slagene (Between the Fights), but it had not yet been 
 printed or acted. In this little play we find the first 
 attempt made to adapt the style of the Sagas to 
 dramatic poetry ; but Bjornson, still young, and by 
 nature a lyric poet, had not succeeded in fitting 
 
 1 Helgeland is a tract of the coast of Norway north of Trcndhjera. 
 
THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. loi 
 
 himself to its severe brevity. Thus Ibsen was in 
 truth the first to apply it to the drama, while Bjorn- 
 son simultaneously revived it in a narrative form 
 in his Synnove Solbakken. Thus the two poets met 
 for the first time on common ground, each separately 
 and independently reverting to the old Scandinavian 
 abruptness and conciseness of expression, with a 
 view to finding a form suited to his poetical aims. 
 The way in which Ibsen solved the problem has 
 been admired by contemporary and by more recent 
 judges of art. There is here nothing superfluous, 
 nothing unnecessary, no intrusion of the personal 
 element, no lyric outbursts. The language glows 
 with passion, but the fire never bursts into flames 
 or sparks. We find sharp wit and biting retort, 
 but the contest is never fought with light weapons. 
 Rather do we feel as if we were looking on at a 
 struggle for life or death between men armed with 
 the short heavy swords of the ancient Vikings. 
 Love and hate, friendship and revenge, scorn and 
 anguish, they are all as concentrated and as vehe- 
 ment as in the Saga itself. The style could not 
 have been more happily adapted to the matter, and 
 as we read we are irresistibly reminded of Henrik 
 Wergeland's description of the- speech of the 
 Dalesmen — 
 
 Like the clear a.xe in the woodland, 
 Sonorous it sounds, and yet homely. 
 
 But it is not alone the style of the Sagas, but their 
 
102 THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 very spirit which we find living in this fine work. 
 One critic after another has blamed the writer for 
 having mangled the demi-gods of the Volsunga Saga 
 by turning them into Vikings of the time of Erik 
 Blodoxe, and having at the same time made use of 
 other Sagas in order to collect effective scenes for 
 his drama. The only critic, so far as I am aware, 
 who has taken his part in this matter is Vasenius. 
 In his opinion, Ibsen is perfectly justified in making 
 simple Vikings of the heroes of the Volsunga Saga, 
 and has borrowed nothing from any other myth. 
 
 Any one who will take the trouble to read all the 
 Sagas which have any connection with the case in 
 point will discern that neither of these views gives 
 a truly accurate idea of the relation of the play to 
 these sources. In the first place, Haermaendene paa 
 Helgelaiid can by no means be so directly affiliated 
 to the Volsunga Saga as its critics state. All that 
 the dramatist has borrowed from it is a part of the 
 prologue and a part of the skeleton of the story; 
 but he has only adopted the groundwork of the 
 Saga, neither its details nor its characters. 
 
 Like Sigurd Favnesbane (Dragon-slayer) Sigurd 
 the Viking has done the deed exacted by Hjordis 
 (Brynhild) from the man whom she will wed, and 
 afterwards, like his hero namesake, has renounced 
 her in favour of his half-brother Gunnar, and 
 married another wife. This is told in a dialogue 
 with Hjordis, who, in consequence of this revela- 
 tion, brings about Sigurd's death and her own. It 
 
THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 103 
 
 is evident that the expressions which can apply 
 equally to the Saga and the drama must be very 
 general. 
 
 There is but one point of real resemblance. 
 When Gudrun has betrayed the secret, there is a 
 scene in which she strives to soothe Brynhild, and 
 entreats her to think no more of it. In the next 
 scene Sigurd explains everything to Brynhild, and 
 then comes a scene in which Brynhild incites 
 Gunnar to kill Sigurd. These three scenes have 
 their counterpart in Haermaendene, but they occur 
 in diiferent order, and no part of them has been 
 verbally transferred to the drama. That there is a 
 real connection between the play and the Volsunga 
 Saga is undeniable, but it is as loose as that of 
 Fru Inger with real history. The corresponding 
 scenes in Haerniaendene cannot possibly be regarded 
 as a paraphrase of similar portions of the Volsunga 
 Saga; nay, the play cannot with any precision be 
 spoken of even as an independent dramatic version 
 of the legend. To be exact, we can only describe 
 it as a dramatic work in which some leading features 
 of the Saga have been appropriated in a very much 
 altered form. 
 
 The same may be said of the relationship of the 
 piece to other Sagas — as, for instance, Oernulf's 
 death-lament to the passage in the Egil's Saga where 
 the origin of the famous song Sonnetabet (the Loss 
 of the Son) is set forth. Here Ibsen has really 
 dramatised the myth; and similar details, though 
 
I04 THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 not treated in exactly the same manner, are to be 
 met with throughout the Sagas, which Ibsen knew 
 through Petersen's translation. The magnificent 
 scene of the feast in the second act shows many- 
 references to the Sagas. Oernulf's question as to 
 how Thoralf fell, and his remark on it, have 
 their parallel in Kveldulf's words on the death of 
 his son Thorolf.i Hjordis's speech about the 
 bowstring is borrowed from the famous words 
 spoken by Halgerde at Gunnar of Hlidarende's 
 last fight ; ^ and finally, the tragical love-story of 
 Kjartan and Gudrun in the Laxdola Saga has several 
 points of resemblance with the fate of Hjordis and 
 Sigurd. 
 
 All these points may be regarded as trifles, and it 
 may certainly be said that at any rate they do not 
 disprove that Ibsen collected effective passages from 
 various Sagas wherewith to grace his dramatised ver- 
 sion of the Volsunga Saga. But now let us turn to 
 the important point, the characters themselves. Can 
 it be said of them with any truth that they are the 
 demi-gods of the Sagas defaced by Ibsen's hand ? 
 What have Sigurd the Viking and Sigurd the Dragon- 
 slayer in common ? Their name, their courage, and 
 their skill in battle. The name, which has no doubt 
 misled many critics, Ibsen chose without prejudice, 
 simply because it was a common Viking name ; and 
 as for courage and skill in the fight, they were 
 
 1 Egil's Saga. 
 - Compare the passage with Njal's Saga. 
 
THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 105 
 
 common in quite as high a degree to the Vikings 
 of Erik Blodoxe's time as to the half-mythical per- 
 sonages of the Volsimg legend. 
 
 Ibsen would indeed laave been a bungler if, sup- 
 posing him to have intended to put Sigurd the 
 Dragon-slayer on the stage, he had not represented 
 him more faithfully. But this was not his intention. 
 What he aimed at was the presentment of the 
 typical Viking of the later Viking period, shortly 
 before the introduction of Christianity, and this 
 problem he has quite satisfactorily solved. Again 
 what points of identity do we discern between the 
 characters of Gunnar of Hlidarende and Gunnar 
 Gjukesson ? One is as gentle and peaceable as the 
 other is fierce and quarrelsome.. But if, in fact, we 
 were bent on finding a prototype for every single 
 figure, we must seek it in the Njal's Saga, and not 
 in Volsunga. 
 
 When Gunnar of Hlidarende has felled his foe 
 at Rangaa he says, "I do not know whether I 
 may be thought a man of less valour than other 
 men because more than others I loathe to slay a 
 man." In these words he the key to his character. 
 And it is not impossible that we find in this same 
 Saga more clue to the character of Hjordis than 
 in the V5lsunga Saga. Hjordis is, no doubt, a 
 Valkyrie by nature, as Brynhild is, but the other 
 has much more in common with the wicked women 
 of the family Sagas. Her conduct to the peasant 
 Kaare, her defiant and her spiteful words at the 
 
io6 THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 banquet, her thirst for revenge and cruelty, seem 
 to ally her more closely to Gunnar's wife, but 
 with this difference, that Ibsen has endeavoured 
 to supply a motive for deeds which, in the Njal's 
 Saga, appear motiveless and inhuman, and so makes 
 them seem human. That Dagny at all resembles 
 Gudrun in the Volsunga Saga no one will assert. 
 In spite of Ibsen's own statement in the preface 
 to Gildet paa Solhaug concerning the two female 
 personages who lived in his mind while reading 
 the Sagas, Dagny has no direct affinity with that 
 literature ; unless, indeed, Kjartan's wife Hrefna, 
 in the Laxdola Saga, may be regarded as a feeble 
 shadow of Ibsen's creation. 
 
 Finally, we come to Oernulf : he is typical of the 
 primitive, rough-hewn uncivilised Viking race. Egil 
 Skallagrimson in his old age, and several other 
 heroes of the Sagas, have no doubt sat as models 
 for this figure. Oernulf, with his venerable strength, 
 his obduracy, his insistance on his rights, and his 
 love of money and possessions, is a typical indi- 
 viduality of the Viking age. 
 
 I have here proved, I believe, that any attempt to 
 account for this play as a dramatic version of the 
 Volsunga Saga comes to nothing under a com- 
 parison of the piece and the legend. To arrive 
 at a satisfactory solution, we can only suppose 
 that Ibsen, having assimilated a whole series of 
 Sagas, worked them out independently to a com- 
 plete unity, which reproduces the spirit of the 
 
THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 107 
 
 legends very admirably, though he rarely adopts the 
 words of the family legends. In these race-myths, 
 with their vehement actors and fierce scenes, he found 
 exactly what he needed " as the human embodiment 
 of the moods, the ideas, and conceptions which at that 
 time ruled him, or at least floated before him, more 
 or less distinct." The poet who in his first great 
 tragedy had conceived of the " discrepancy between 
 our desires and our power of fulfiUing them, between 
 wish and possibility," must have been singularly 
 attracted by such homogeneous and sternly com- 
 pacted individualities as those of Oernulf and Sigurd ; 
 and at the same time, the man who had begun 
 his poetic career by sketching such a figure as that 
 of Furia must have recognised in the wild and 
 passionate woman in whose image he moulded 
 Hjordis the creation of his own imagination. That 
 first youthful attempt is bound by close affinity 
 to the first ripe work of his manhood. 
 
 This Viking drama was as important, as marking 
 an epoch in the evolution of Northern dramatic 
 poetry, as Bjomson's Synn'dve Solbakken was in 
 the domain of narrative. It was a far nearer ap- 
 proach to the Scandinavian antique than any 
 dramatic work hitherto produced. Between Ewald's 
 Balder s D'dd'^ and Oeblenschlaeger's Haakon Jarl 
 there is a great advance as regards the truthful 
 conception and presentment of the old dwellers in 
 the North ; but from Oehlenschlseger to Ibsen the 
 
 ' Johannes Ewald, one of the greatest of Danish poets, 1743-1781. 
 
io8 THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 Stride is far greater. No wonder, indeed, that a 
 generation accustomed to view Scandinavian anti- 
 quity through Oehlenschlaeger's eyes found this 
 play savage, and considered it a mistake to follow 
 the lines of the Sagas so closely on the stage. " The 
 wildness and ferocity which they describe," says 
 J. L. Heiberg in his dicta on Ibsen's work, " are 
 mitigated in the original epic form of document; 
 but as soon as they are dramatised, nothihg re- 
 mains but the material in its native roughness. 
 The author has apprehended the material with such 
 objective vividness that it is almost offensive, since 
 in a drama all that is hard must seem harder still than 
 in an epic tale. A national theatre will hardly be the 
 outcome of such experiments." ■*■ As a result of this 
 verdict, the piece was rejected at the Royal Theatre 
 in Copenhagen, and fared no better in Christiania. 
 
 At the Norwegian capital the fight over the 
 nationalising of the theatre was at its height. The 
 threatre at Christiania was, in fact, still Danish, and 
 the artistic management was in the hands of a 
 Dane, Borgaard by name. A large population of 
 the residents, more especially the elder ones, ac- 
 cepted this as a matter of course. The Danish 
 artists were much admired, and every attempt to 
 create a Norwegian school of acting was regarded 
 with distrust and contempt. 
 
 In opposition to this theatre and its patrons was 
 
 1 Ptosaiske Skrifler. vii. p. 40. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, the eminent 
 Danish critic ; 1791-1860. 
 
THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 109 
 
 a party, formed of all who maintained that the Nor- 
 wegian stage must be Norwegian, if it was to fulfil 
 its function as an element of culture for the people, 
 A few of these men had, in 1852, established a 
 sort of dramatic preparatory school, with a view to 
 training Norwegian actors. This school ere long 
 took form as a theatre — the Norwegian theatre — and 
 between this and the older playhouse there was for 
 about three years a vehement rivalry, which found 
 an echo among the people as well as in the press. 
 As stage-manager of the " Norwegian theatre," 
 Ibsen found himself in a leading position in this 
 feud, and he rushed into the fray heart and soul. 
 
 The year before Ibsen's return to Christiania 
 had witnessed a great battle over the nationality 
 of the stage. Bjornson, and the National party 
 generally, insisted that the theatres of Christiania 
 should no longer derive all their strength from 
 Denmark ; and when this demand was not complied 
 with, a newly imported Danish actor was by com- 
 mon consent hissed off the stage. As a result of 
 this demonstration several Norwegian actors were 
 brought forward ; but the Danish director continued 
 to treat every Norwegian in a very step-dame 
 fashion, and the complaint was especially loud that 
 Norwegian literature was entirely set aside. 
 
 After this hissing there was a kind of truce, till, 
 in the autumn of 1857, Henrik Ibsen offered his 
 drama Haermaendene paa Helgeland to the old 
 Christiania theatre. His own theatre, with its 
 
no THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 younger and less experienced players, could not 
 perform it. Borgaard at first promised that it 
 should be produced that season ; but at the end 
 of six months the author was informed that " the 
 pecuniary position " of the theatre during the 
 present season did not allow of any outlay on 
 original works. As, however, " the pecuniary posi- 
 tion" of the house had, but a short time before, 
 allowed of a not inconsiderable addition to the 
 salaries of several Danish actors, and as, moreover, 
 not a word was said of the possible production of 
 the play next year, many persons regarded this as 
 a rejection by the management of all national 
 dramatic hterature. Consequently on this, Ibsen 
 made a violent attack on the management in a 
 newspaper, Aftenbladet, and this gave rise to violent 
 recriminations on both sides, in which Ibsen was 
 coarsely reviled, while Bjornson and Botten-Hansen 
 entered the lists on his behalf. He had no alterna- 
 tive but to bring the play out in book form, 
 and have it acted on his own stage. It was not 
 tiU 1 86 1 that the piece was adopted by the Chris- 
 tiania theatre (the older house), where it has since 
 been frequently revived. 
 
 How strongly Ibsen at this time felt himself 
 bound up with the Nationalist movement may be 
 seen in his having conceived of founding an 
 Association for contending against foreign influence 
 and supporting native efforts in art. The ideal was 
 discussed in the office of the Aftenblad, with two of 
 
THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. iii 
 
 the editors, Richter (the late eminent statesman) and 
 Bjornson ; and as a result, Ibsen and Bjornson were 
 invited to lay the foundation of such an Union. It 
 was formed on the 22nd of November 1859, with 
 the style of Det Norske Selskab (the Norwegian 
 Society) ; Bjornson was elected president, Ibsen 
 vice-president. 
 
 One of the tasks announced by the union was a 
 " crusade against the Dusseldorf school of painting." 
 This was an error which withheld many persons 
 from becoming members. What was intended, how- 
 ever, was no more than a defensive attitude against 
 the encroaching influence of foreign as opposed to 
 national art, and the chief point was the struggle 
 against the Danish element in dramatic art in Nor- 
 way. In this the Association was certainly one of 
 the chief agents which led to the retirement, soon 
 after, of Vilhelm Wiehe, the leading Danish actor 
 at the old theatre. On this occasion the Danish 
 party raised a perfect storm of lamentation, which 
 found more or less immoderate vent in the papers. 
 A. Munch, for instance, bewailed himself thus : — 
 
 Can it be possible that he is driven 
 
 Hence by the shriek of " Norway for Norwegians ! " 
 
 By frantic shouts of patriotic Bersarks ? 
 
 When all the genuine pubhc's on his side, 
 
 And all who hold opinions worth possessing ; 
 
 and H. O. Blom, in a rhymed epistle to Wiehe, 
 declared that the last day of the stage was at hand. 
 This brought Ibsen into the field, with his bold and 
 
112 THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 witty "Letter to the poet H. O. B16m."i In a few 
 years the National party remained victorious. Most 
 of the Danish actors had retired. Borgaard took 
 his leave, and the old Christiania theatre was amal- 
 gamated with the National Theatre. 
 
 In other matters the Norwegian Society never 
 played any important part. In i860 it had formed 
 a commission, of which Ibsen was a member, the 
 object of which was to bring together the best Norse 
 talent from the Bergen theatre and the two theatres 
 in the capital, to give a series of high-class perform- 
 ances at Christiania. However, as the managers of 
 the old Christiania house refused to lend their 
 stage, the idea fell to the ground, and the Norwegian 
 Society had not the honour of carrying it into 
 execution. Subsequently to this a number of 
 the members of the Storthing joined the Society, 
 which thenceforth assumed the aspect of a political 
 union. Ibsen gradually withdrew into the back- 
 ground, and the Society presently ceased to exist. 
 
 Ibsen, however, joined another and less pug- 
 nacious Union ; this consisted of literary men and 
 lovers of literature who gathered round Botten- 
 Hansen. They met sometimes in their leader's 
 well-lined library, sometimes in a little Swiss coffee- 
 house — L'Orsa's ia// — where they had the use of 
 a small private room. Although the times were 
 rife in momentous political questions, men of the 
 most antagonistic views assembled about the sym- 
 
THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 113 
 
 pathetic person of their chief, A. O. Vinje, Ernst 
 Sars, Christian Friele, L. L. Daae, and others, met as 
 friends on neutral ground. Asbjornsen's humour 
 from time to time gave pleasant relief to their grave 
 literary discourse ; sometimes Welhaven would join 
 the circle, and when he and Vinje began a keen 
 and witty war of words there was no lack of life 
 and laughter in the little party. Ibsen was a con- 
 stant guest, and the greater part of the time he 
 could spare from his work at the theatre he spent 
 either at Botten-Hansen's or in the little back- 
 parlour of the Orsa's kafe. 
 
 These years were not rich in literary work. He 
 wrote several poems, of which Terje Viken and Paa 
 Vidderne (On the Moors), both written in i860, are 
 the most important. The second gives the clearest 
 evidence of the ferment he was going through, and 
 that he was striving to work out something new in 
 his verse, which had not yet assumed perfect clear- 
 ness and consistency. 
 
 It need hardly be said that his head, meanwhile, 
 was full of plans for new departures in dramatic 
 work. By the summer of 1858 he had begun 
 making studies for Kongsemnerne (Rivals for the 
 Throne) ; but this was set aside for the time, and a 
 new scheme gradually absorbed his attention. He 
 took the materials for this new drama, not from the 
 past, but from the present ^ it was not to be a his- 
 torical tragedy, but a comedy of our own time. The 
 satirist in him bad waxed strong ; the plot of Kaer- 
 
11+ THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 lighedens Komedie (The Comedy of Love) cast the 
 new historical tragedy into the background. 
 
 But the execution of this work was hindered by 
 difficulties of form. A modern comedy must neces- 
 sarily be written in prose, and the personages must 
 speak like educated men and women of the day. 
 The plot was sketched and the writing begun, but 
 the further he went the less was he satisfied. He 
 had been so long accustomed to the Saga style, and 
 the expression and phraseology of mediaeval romance, 
 that at first he found it neither easy nor natural to 
 hit the tone of ordinary conversation. It was stiffer 
 than it should have been ; and Ibsen felt that the 
 dialogue made an ineffective impression. So he 
 gave up prose and began the piece, with more or 
 less freedom, in the familiar rhymed iambics, which, 
 as it stands, have been admired with justice for 
 their vivacity and wit. It was not till he wrote 
 De Unges Forbund that Ibsen succeeded in infusing 
 these qualities into modern colloquial prose. 
 
 The action of the " Comedy of Love " takes place 
 in a country-house near Christiania, and its per- 
 sonages are ordinary men and women of the day — 
 students, and a lawyer, and a wholesale dealer ; 
 indeed, the author had the audacity, till then un- 
 dreamed of in Norway, to bring a reverend personage 
 on the stage, and make him absurd in the form of 
 ^ Pastor Straamand. As a satire on society it is a 
 - bold piece of work, full of fresh wit and original hits. 
 " There is something in the ' Comedy of Love ' 
 
THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 115 
 
 which suggests Camilla CoUett's tale Amtmandens 
 Dotre (The OfScial's Daughters)," says Brandes in his 
 essay on Ibsen. ^ Common to both, no doubt, are 
 the attacks on betrothal and marriage, but the in- 
 cidents giving rise to these attacks are widely dis- 
 similar. Camilla CoUett's novel is directed against 
 the mariage de conveyance. No marriage can be 
 happy if it is not based on mutual affection. The 
 feelings of the woman more especially must be taken 
 much more into account than has hitherto been the 
 practice ; and on these two points, it may be said, 
 the whole book turns. 
 
 Ibsen, on the contrary, makes no attack on such 
 marriages. Indeed, he puts words strongly uphold- 
 ing them into the mouth of one of the most promi- 
 nent persons in the play, the merchant Guldstad ; and 
 the significance he himself ascribed to this defence 
 may be inferred from its influence on the denoue- 
 ment ; for it is, in fact, Guldstad's advocacy of a 
 "marriage of reason," as compared with a love- 
 match, which induces Falk and Svanhild to part. 
 The whole piece, from beginning to end, is a satire 
 on marriage for love only. It is just this, and the way 
 in which love breaks down in such unions, which is 
 the subject-matter of the plot. At the very moment 
 when love first appears on the scene it receives the 
 sentence of death. First come the aunts and friends 
 and " destroy the poetry of love " with their intru- 
 sive interest in the betrothed couple ; and then comes 
 
 1 Det moderns Gjennembruds Mtsnd, p. 125. 
 
Ii6 THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 marriage, with its struggle for social advantages, and 
 the care of children. What begins as a festival, ends, 
 as a rule, in vulgar commonplace ; and instead of 
 being uplifted by their life together, most couples are 
 dragged down to mere stolid and brainless habit : — 
 
 Use your experience ; look around in life, — 
 Each pair of lovers takes for creed and psalter 
 That miUions came to them as man and wife. 
 They gallop harum-scarum to the altar ; 
 They make a home, spoiled pets of happiness ; 
 A space goes by in faith-intoxication ; 
 At length a day of reckoning dawns ! ah ! yes ! 
 And proves mere bankruptcy their jubilation. 
 Bankrupt the flower of youth on matron's cheek ; 
 Bankrupt the bloom of thought within her mind ; 
 Bankrupt the husband's courage ; tame and meek 
 Each flame that once flew blazing on the wind ; 
 Bankrupt the whole condition of affairs, 
 Yet still they're quoted, on the Bourse of pairs, 
 A first-class firm of love, the best you'll find. 
 
 This is how Straamand ^ and his Maren, Styver and 
 Miss Skjsere, have fared, and so it is with Lind and 
 Anna. All these three couples have plighted 
 themselves "for love," but their love is not strong 
 enough to hold out : — 
 
 Of all the flame scarcely the smoke is left ! 
 Sic transit gloria amoris, Svanhild. 
 
 It is with love, in short, as it is with religion : it 
 loses its fervour as soon as it is made public. The 
 
 1 Most of the names in this comedy have a literal meaning in Nor- 
 wegian ; thus/a/i is a hawk, skjare a magpie, styver a worn-out copper 
 coin ; while lind is mild or meek, and straamand a man of straw. 
 
THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. I17 
 
 human beings of our day are too petty-minded to 
 love; and the tragical part of the business is, that 
 they still live on in the belief that they do love. 
 In contrast to all this torpor stand Falk and Svanhild. 
 They see and know it, and it revolts them. But 
 even they are too completely the children of their 
 time to believe in the triumph of their own love 
 over the dead level of commonplace everyday life. 
 They feel, as Svanhild says — 
 
 From this hour 
 Our triumph creeps disconsolate downhill ! 
 And we, when once the day of reckoning dawns, 
 And we must stand before our mighty Judge, 
 And He, a righteous God, bids us return 
 The treasure that He lent us in life's garden, 
 Falk, we shall find no answer then but this, 
 " Lord, we have lost it on our road to death." 
 
 No ; if their love is to live and preserve its elevat- 
 ing power, it must become a memory; it must be 
 emancipated from the forms of everyday existence, 
 and be transmuted into a pure spiritual treasure in 
 their souls. Falk and Svanhild arrive, on this point, 
 at the same issue which Henrik Ibsen had given 
 expression to three years earlier in his youthful 
 poems ; and Falk, like Ibsen, insists on the purifying 
 power of memory in love when he exclaims : — 
 
 As 'tis the grave that heralds dawning life, 
 
 So love to life can only wedded be. 
 
 When, loosed from longing and desires' vain strife, 
 
 It wins the spirit-home of memory. 
 
Ii8 THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 It is in Strict harmony with his peculiar concep- 
 tion of love that the author should sever his two 
 principal personages just as they have learnt to love 
 each other. This termination of the piece, which 
 to the ordinary judgment must always seem painful, 
 to Ibsen appears the only beautiful and poetical 
 denouement possible. All that is startling in the 
 " Comedy of Love " is the direct outcome of the 
 strangely marked idealistic nature of the poet. For 
 the sake of the ideal he tests and rejects the in- 
 sufficiencies of life ; for the sake of love he lashes 
 wooing. That he was not bUnd to the beauty of 
 domestic life is abundantly evident from the words 
 he attributes to Straamand and to Styver in the third 
 act ; but his sternly logical feelings and thoughts 
 allow of no half-measures. His eye is so accus- 
 tomed to the pure light of the ideal that it cannot 
 be satisfied with the refracted rays of the real. 
 The comedy was finished in the summer of 1862, 
 and appeared in the following winter as the New 
 Year's extra-number for the subscribers to Illuswret 
 Nyhedsblad. 
 
 Already in the following year Ibsen had completed 
 a new dramatic work — that previously mentioned as 
 Kongsemnerne. When he began the work, in the 
 summer of 1863, he was hampered by no doubt or 
 hesitancy. The great work was carried through 
 with one effort, and the subject took form so quickly 
 and easily that the whole thing was finished in 
 six weeks. This statement, already made by a 
 
THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 119 
 
 former biographer, seems incredible ; but it is never- 
 theless accurate. Ibsen himself told me that it 
 was so. 
 
 Kongsemnerne (Rivals for the Throne) displays 
 considerable differences of structure as compared 
 with its immediate forerunners. In these the action 
 was brought into as short a period as possible. 
 Unity of time was observed, and the action was 
 carried out with the least available change of scene, 
 so that unity of place was almost secured. In 
 " Rivals for the Throne " Ibsen has observed a 
 much less strict rule ; for, from the beginning till 
 the close of the piece, some years must have elapsed, 
 and there are various changes of scene — on an 
 average two in each act. But although on such 
 points he has allowed himself greater freedom than 
 usual, he has, on the other hand, been able to 
 adhere more strictly to historical accuracy. We 
 are shown the most important events of the time 
 of which it treats, and the main features of the 
 leading characters are also recognisable, though 
 Ibsen has laid the hand of genius on the facts of 
 history. 
 
 Ernst Sars, when defining the difference between 
 the adherents of Haakon and of Skule, makes use 
 of expressions which apply without much alteration 
 to the two parties in the drama. " We everywhere,'' 
 says he, " find the same strength and assurance in 
 one party, and the same weakness, the same lack 
 of confidence, in the other." The old Birkebejner 
 
120 THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 (birch-legs-') come forward simply as men whose 
 conviction of the righteousness of their cause is 
 no less immovable than their confidence in victory 
 at last. Skule's adherent?, on the other hand, 
 put their trust in cunning and intrigue, and try 
 by these means to place impediments in the 
 way of their opponents' enthusiasm. They dare 
 not boldly declare their aim, and that aim is, 
 indeed, decidedly opposed to the general will; so 
 that their proceedings are marked by indecision and 
 ambiguity. 
 
 The cause of this contrast is to be found in 
 history. Haakon represented the permanence of 
 Sverre's dynasty ; " he was brought up in the firm 
 conviction of his right to become king of the land. 
 He grew up among the old warriors of Sverre's day, 
 who were imbued with his principles ; and from them 
 Haakon had received those principles, in the form 
 of a complete system, whose realisation could only 
 be a matter of time. Thus he stood from the first 
 in a clear and intelligible position which set its 
 stamp on his whole character. What, above all, 
 gave him strength was the ease of mind, the 
 equanimity, for which he was remarkable, and which 
 had their root in the feeling he never for a moment 
 lost, that he had right on his side, and the suffrages 
 of his people." ^ 
 
 1 The King's men. So called by reason of the shoes made of birch- 
 jark which they wore in their first extreme poverty. 
 ^ Sars : Udsigt over den norske historic, p. 198. 
 
THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 121 
 
 With Skiile it was far otherwise. He represented 
 the antagonism of the nobles and the clergy in ' 
 opposition to the new kingship. But the struggle 
 was in truth over. The King's party had won 
 the day, and Skule"'s attempt to reviv^the contest 
 was but a last convulsive writhing of the con- , 
 quered foe. 
 
 " Still, the noble and priestly faction,-which was 
 led by Skule, collected a circle of adherents; but 
 after so many reverses they must have been fewer 
 and less trusting." This was proved when Skule 
 stirred up an open rebellion against Haakon. Not- 
 withstanding that for a time fortune seemed to 
 favour him, " it was evident from the first that this 
 attempt to revive an opposition to the throne in 
 Norway was hke the desperate hazard of a gambler 
 who does not calculate his chances of loss, but 
 blindly risks his all in the hope of a stroke of good 
 luck. The clerical party no longer held together, 
 and Skule's friends dared not rally round him. 
 He still had some adherents among the nobles ; 
 but the time was past when the nobles could form 
 a party such as that of Count Erling Skakke, 
 who, in 1 164, had succeeded in getting his son 
 crowned as Magnus V. He could not build even 
 on the ancient race-feud between the natives of 
 Trondhjem and the dwellers on the Vik or bay 
 of Christiania. This hostiHty had of old been an 
 ever-flowing source of civil warfare, but it seemed 
 now to have dried up. Nor had Skule's proceed- 
 
122 THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 ings any support in public feeling or prevailing 
 interest ; a single defeat was enough to bring about 
 his overthrow." ^ 
 
 As may be seen, so far as the relation of 
 Haakon and Skule are concerned, the historian 
 and the poet are fully agreed. In psychological 
 treatment, however, Ibsen gives both the leaders 
 far more depth and importance than history would 
 lead us to ascribe to them. Haakon does not 
 seem to have been a man of conspicuous talent; 
 and though Ibsen nevertheless makes him such 
 an one, and puts right royal ideas into his mouth, 
 he does so, beyond a doubt, because he felt parti- 
 cularly attracted to the man of his creation. 
 
 Excepting only in " Saint John's Eve," " The 
 Feasting at Solhaug," and OlafLiljckrans, the inward 
 call of his leading characters had hitherto always 
 played an important part in Ibsen's pieces. Cati- 
 line had a " call " to save Rome ; Fru Inger to 
 redeem Norway ; Hjordis to become a Valkyrie ; 
 and Falk to be a poet. To Ibsen, at that 
 time, such a vocation was surrounded by a halo 
 of mystic poetry, and for this reason a figure 
 such as Haakon, whose belief in his own right 
 and whose confidence in his own strength were 
 so unmistakable, must have appeared to him under 
 a poetic glamour. Ernst Sars opines that " Haakon 
 cannot be compared for greatness and poetic dig- 
 nity to the most illustrious of his predecessors." 
 
 ^ Ernst Sars, the historian of Norway, in his Udsigt. 
 
THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 123 
 
 Ibsen is of a different opinion. The mere coin- 
 cidence of the task before him with the position 
 in which he is placed, to Ibsen constitutes his 
 greatness ; for it is that which is mystical, which 
 is unfathomable; that is the grand secret of his 
 inward call ; it is his covenant with the " Power 
 above" who smooths the way for the elect ruler, 
 and leads him safely and almost unawares to the 
 goal, as though walking in his sleep. 
 
 In contrast to this mystical and Aladdin-like con- 
 fidence, we have the man of doubts and hesitancies, 
 who is never sure of himself ; who can never decide 
 on one course because he always has another in his 
 eye which he might equally well choose ; who is 
 God's step-child on earth, because the spark from 
 heaven, which Bishop Nikolas calls the Ingenium, 
 never shines in him. He is highly gifted, noble, 
 and magnanimous. He lacks nothing but that one 
 thing which makes the other's greatness ; and in 
 exchange for it he has the torturing gift of doubt. 
 In his picture of this character Ibsen has gone 
 higher and deeper than in any previous work ; nay, 
 more : it is one of the most subtle and finely-wrought 
 figures of all the Ibsen gallery. 
 
 With fine insight Georg Brandes has quoted one 
 little dialogue between Skule and the Skald Jatgeir 
 as throwing light on Ibsen's attitude towards his 
 
 hero : — 
 
 King Skule. 
 
 What gift do / require to be a king .' 
 
124 THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 Jaigeir. 
 
 Not the gift of doubt ; for then thou wouldst not ask 
 such questions. 
 
 Kitig Skule. 
 What gift do I require ? 
 
 Jatgeir. 
 Sire, thou art a king. 
 
 King Skule. 
 Art thou so certain, all the time, that thou art apoei? " 
 
 The last reply might well serve as a motto for 
 the whole piece. " How much there is in this 
 reply ! " says Brandes. " What a bitter confession 
 lies in this line ! " 
 
 Nothing can be more certain than that Ibsen, 
 when in this drama he became the poet of doubt — of 
 self-doubt, had himself felt the gnawing of that ser- 
 pent in the depths of his heart. Even in his earliest 
 poems it finds some expression, and we have reason 
 to suspect it at a later time under his hesitation over 
 the production of some of his plays. To what a 
 pitch he was tormented by doubt of his own poetic 
 gift is to be seen in a cycle of poems which was 
 published in Illustreret Nyhedsblad, 1859, under the 
 title / Billedgalleriet (In the Picture-Gallery). The 
 editor notes " that these poems belong to an earlier 
 period of his life and work ; " they were probably 
 written towards the close of his residence in Bergen. 
 The origin of the poems was an impression from 
 
THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 125 
 
 the Dresden Gallery, of a young girl copying Murillo's 
 Madonna. The same reminiscences occur many 
 years later in a little poem included in his collected 
 works under the title /" Galleriet (In the Gallery). 
 He puts a series of songs into the mouth of this 
 young girl ; she bewails her ruined dreams of art ; 
 and to these he adds a series of sonnets in which he 
 expresses his sympathy with her plaint : — 
 
 I, like this artist in her hall of pictures, 
 
 Have known wild hopes and fair enthusiasms, 
 
 Have spread abroad for flight my poet's pinions, 
 
 And thought to soar far up thro' heaven's clear portals. 
 
 Alas ! I too know what is meant by failure ; 
 
 In that last stroke my poor wing sank exhausted. 
 
 Read through and closed is springtide's book of fables, 
 
 I now have time to ponder on its moral. 
 
 But of what avail is it, after all, to complain of his 
 impotence ? — 
 
 What in the world can be more ludicrous 
 
 Than elegies to mourn one's lyric wants, 
 
 Or still-born poesy, in whimperings 
 
 Because the heart's rich only in grief and darkness .' 
 
 A hideous black elf haunts him in evil hours and 
 whispers words of distrust and doubt into his ear : — 
 
 And when, however quietly, it whispers, 
 
 I feel as though a passing-bell had tolled. 
 
 Or else as though a grave-cold lip had kissed me. 
 
 But all the same he is no longer afraid when the 
 demon comes ; he is no longer so simple ; he knows 
 the connection of it all : the black elf cherishes 
 
126 THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA 
 
 the last blossom which remains, uncultured and 
 neglected, of his spring-time : — 
 
 The blossom is the agonising thought 
 
 That swings the mind from hope to hesitation, 
 
 And stirs both doubt and faith in its vocation ; 
 
 It winds itself about my barren soul, 
 
 As lovingly as shoots, spring-sap has brought 
 
 From Southern vines, cling round a rootless pole. 
 
 So great has Ibsen's distrust of himself been, that 
 he has felt driven to use words of this harsh and 
 vehement character ; so crushed has he been, at such 
 times of ebb in his courage to live, and in his poet's 
 faith, that he has found no adequate form for his 
 mood but in such fractious and desperate words. 
 As we read this poem we begin to understand what 
 lies at the root of the wonderful understanding and 
 subtlety with which Skule's ever-doubting nature 
 is delineated. 
 
 However, by the time when Kongsemnerne was 
 written this mental struggle was a thing of the past. 
 Like the young poet in the " Comedy of Love," 
 Ibsen had this in common with the hawk, that he 
 needed a contrary wind if he was to reach a height. 
 His was one of those natures which opposition does 
 not quell but uplifts. And he met with plenty of 
 opposition. As bitter quinine gives strength to the 
 nerves, so was his self-confidence confirmed by the 
 bitterness to which the circumstances in which he 
 lived gradually gave rise. 
 
 Much may be said to the credit of the Norwegian 
 
THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 127 
 
 capital ; but no one could ever think of calling it a 
 city in which art and literature prosper. From a 
 small town of about 10,000 inhabitants at the be- 
 ginning of the century, it has grown with almost 
 American rapidity, and has a population now of 
 more than 100,000; nay, fast progressing towards 
 200,000. It may be said with truth of Christiania 
 that it has " shot up," and the age of "shooting up " 
 is, as we all know, not remarkable for amenity. 
 Christiania is a town of colonists, with some pre- 
 tensions to be regarded as a centre of culture. It 
 has, indeed, progressed so far that it demands to be 
 regarded as a piece of Europe, though, at the same 
 time, its proportions are so narrow that it scarcely 
 affords elbow-room; men jostle each other, push, 
 tread on each other's toes, because there is not 
 room for any one to get along. Scandal and calumny 
 thrive to an incredible degree. If one of the inhabi- 
 tants of the poultry-yard sheds a feather, at once, 
 by the help of friends and acquaintances, it becomes 
 five hens. And in proportion as men are ready for 
 back-biting so are they unready to recognise merit. 
 Vin larger communities, where there is more room, 
 there is also more kindhness, and the recognition 
 of one man's merits does not exclude that of 
 another's^ Here, on the contrary, a narrow-hearted- 
 ness prevails, based, as it would seem, on the old 
 proverb that " two fat pigs cannot ride in one sack." 
 When one man has succeeded in coming to the front 
 it is always at the cost of the others. And here,i 
 
128 THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 where judgment is most severe, independence is most 
 lacking. Every one waits for the word from out- 
 side. The author nowadays who would fain conquer 
 Christiania must first take Co_genhagen_by storm. 
 
 Such a state of things must, of course, fetter all 
 artistic and literary creativeness. It is annoying 
 and stultifying to many men to meet with such uni- 
 versal indifference and want of sympathy ; they lose 
 all power of will, all courage, and say good-bye to 
 everything. Others are embittered, and give vent to 
 their bitterness. If a collection could be made of 
 all the outbursts against Christiania from the vari- 
 ous literature of this century it would be a choice 
 posy indeed. 
 
 No Norwegian poetJias_had_a word of praise for 
 Christiania ; the only exception that could be named 
 is Wergeland ; but he, significantly enough, confined 
 himself to expressing his satisfaction at the growth 
 of the city ; and at a later period he also knew it only 
 too well, he also lost heart, and bitterly bewailed 
 having been born in Norway ; ^ nay, he seriously 
 thought of seeking some foreign scene for his life 
 and labours. And Welhaven, though he met with 
 far other treatment, has recorded no flattering wit- 
 ness against the capital, in his cycle of satiric 
 sonnets called Norges Daemring (The Twilight 
 of Norway) 1834. In Soirde Billeder (Evening 
 Pictures) he worked out the idea in a more complete 
 
 ' See Gosse : Northern Studies ; chap. i. for particulars regarding 
 Wergeland, Welhaven, and the literary life of Christiania in the thirties. 
 
THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 129 
 
 form, and if we would know what his feelings then 
 were we have only to read £>ei Tordnede True 
 (Coming Thunder). 
 
 Camilla CoUett has contributed so many flowers 
 to this posy that they would fill several pages of 
 quotations. " Oh great and little city ! " we read in 
 Avitmandens Dotre, to quote only a few lines of a 
 single eloquent passage, "what a cold and peevish 
 sky is that which broods over you ! You are great 
 enough with your thousand beaks, yes, great enough 
 to peck those to death slowly whom you no longer 
 need, or to whom you owe a grudge. And yet not 
 great enough for so hapless a wretch to find a 
 corner in which he may hide himself. You are 
 mighty ; you have all the passions and fierce crav- 
 ings and pretensions of a great city; and yet you 
 are so small, so poor, that you cannot gratify one of 
 all those desires." 
 
 Bjornson sings to the same tune in the closing 
 words of the first edition of his Digteog Viser(Poems 
 and Songs) ; he describes the combat of a tiger and 
 a horse on a Spanish arena, while the spectators 
 shout, and try to madden the tiger when the horse 
 has shaken himself free. It is highly significant 
 evidence that none of our living Norwegian poets 
 choose to live in the capital. They have arranged 
 to reside in the country, as Bjornson has done for 
 many years; or, like Kjelland, they have buried 
 themselves in a really small town. As a rule they 
 have chosen a longer or shorter term of voluntary 
 
130 THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 exile. The most important Norwegian works pro- 
 duced in these later years have been written in 
 Paris, Rome, or Munich, and not in Christiania. 
 
 Ibsen himself, during those years when he was 
 a director of the Norwegian theatre, learnt to know 
 better than most men the cruelty of the tender 
 mercies of Christiania. No one seems to have 
 suspected that he. was a .great writer, not even 
 after Haermaendene and Kaerlighedens Komedie 
 had given proof of it. The former was at first 
 but coolly received. Bjornson's novel of Synnove, 
 which was published first, had secured for its 
 author a sort of patent, in public opinion, as 
 restorer of the Saga-style. Ibsen was cast into the 
 shade; indeed, in the discussion which arose on 
 the rejection of his piece, the newspapers published 
 many discourteous comments from anonymous 
 correspondents. Not merely was he accused of 
 being " dishonourable " and " boundlessly con- 
 ceited," but it was assumed that his play — which 
 was not yet finished — was, to judge by his 
 previous efforts, probably but a poor affair; and 
 such expressions as a " Norwegian weed " and 
 " Norwegian plunder " were applied to it. " Henrik 
 Ibsen, as a dramatic author, is of the highest 
 insignificance : the nation cannot with any warmth 
 plant a sheltering hedge about him," wrote one 
 critic ; and of the Fru Inger paa Ostraat the 
 same writer said that "it was a piece so utterly 
 devoid of all idealism and poetry as to be positively 
 
THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 131 
 
 amazing. Every character in the piece bore the 
 stamp of meanness." ^ 
 
 When the " Comedy of Love " was played 
 matters were even worse. In Morgenbladet \t was 
 said that the notion of love which animated the 
 drama was essentially provincial; "it might be 
 expected of country cousins or aunts, but ought 
 never to enter the mind of a poet." The funda- 
 mental theory of the piece " was not only intrinsically 
 untrue and immoral ; it was unpoetical, as every 
 theory of life must be which represents the ideal and 
 the real as irreconcilable." And this was as nothing 
 compared with the verdict pronounced by the 
 Aftenblad. Although Ibsen had been at work no 
 ■ less than three years at this piece, it was spoken 
 of as a "lamentable outcome of literary trifling." 
 " It ends in a recommendation to celibacy, whence 
 it is very evident that Mr. Ibsen must have really 
 had some Catholic notion in his brain when he 
 wrote the 'Comedy of Love.'" "As a dramatic 
 whole it is an absurdity," and the author was a 
 " writer of no mark." " Ibsen has nothing of what 
 is known as genius ; he is clever, and his talent is 
 principally technical and artistic." ^ 
 
 Among the general public the book raised a 
 " storm of indignation more violent and more uni- 
 versal than most books can boast of stirring up, 
 
 ^ Kristianiaposten, 1858. 
 
 2 Morgenlladet, March ij, 1863 ; Aftenhladet, February 14, 1863, 
 in one of a series of papers on literary matters. 
 
132 THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 in a country where literary events are, as a rule, 
 regarded by most of its inhabitants as no concern 
 of theirs." ^ Nay, antagonism was so strong, that 
 when, some time after, Ibsen craved a State bounty 
 for travelling-money, one of the professors at the 
 University declared that " the man who had written 
 the ' Comedy of Love ' deserved a thrashing rather 
 than a travelling allowance." 
 
 As manager of the theatre, too, Ibsen had more than 
 his share of unpleasantness. Actresses who fancied 
 themselves neglected attacked him in the papers, 
 and his position was so ill-founded that he had to 
 submit to insult about every beginner, if he or his 
 admirers fancied that he was left in the background. 
 Then the accent of the performers was a source 
 of vexation. Some thought that it was too strongly 
 Norwegian ; others that it was not Norwegian 
 enough ; and others complained because a French 
 Countess was not made to speak broad Norwegian. 
 
 Thus at every turn vexations awaited him, and 
 Ibsen must have been all the more worried because 
 the New House laboured under great pecuniary 
 difficulties. The town was not large enough to 
 keep two theatres going while they struggled for 
 the mastery; in time there was no more than a 
 pittance for each. In the summer of 1862 the Nor- 
 wegian theatre was bankrupt, and Ibsen conse- 
 quently was left high and dry. His sole fixed 
 income was 1200 krones (about £62: $335), which 
 
 1 Ibsen's words in the preface to the second edition of the play. 
 
THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 133 
 
 he had been receiving since the beginning of 1863 
 as aesthetisk konsulent (artistic adviser) to the Old 
 Theatre. For this salary he was not merely a 
 literary adviser, but was required to see to the 
 historical accuracy of the costume and stage mount- 
 ing when called upon to do so. 
 
 As Bjornson had in 1853 been granted a poet's 
 pension, Ibsen hoped to obtain a similar allowance 
 from the Government ; but his application was re- 
 jected. The only official help he had was certain 
 small sums paid to him for seeking out and collect- 
 ing old Norse poems and ballads. 
 
 Thus he was practically compelled to live by his 
 pen; but that is a calling by which, as matters 
 stand, a man will not grow rich in Norway, espe- 
 cially a man who, like Ibsen, has neither taste nor 
 talent for journalism. 
 
 The prices paid him by publishers were so small 
 as to seem almost incredible. For the " Comedy 
 of Love" he received no more than 100 sp. thaler 
 (132 American dollars), and that was considered a 
 very good price at the time. For Fru Inger and 
 Haermaendene he did not get nearly so much, and 
 when the Old Christiania Theatre at last agreed to 
 take the Viking play, the management put him off 
 with a mere trifle, declaring that, as the piece was 
 published, the theatre might have performed it 
 without paying him a shilling for it. 
 
 To a writer hke Ibsen, whose severe self-judgment ^ 
 rejected every piece of work begun if it did not 
 
134 THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 quite satisfy him, authorship under such conditions 
 was a process of slow starvation. Indeed, he was 
 in such necessity, that several of his friends, in 
 consequence of an article in the Norsk Folkeblad of 
 1869, seriously exerted their influence to procure 
 him — a place in the Customs or some such means 
 of livelihood ! A tempting prospect for the author 
 of Haerniaendene and Kaerlighedens Komedie, to 
 stand- over the weighing-platform and calculate the 
 deductions for sugar-barrels and coffee-bags ! 
 
 On the top of his personal difSculties came the 
 last Danish-German war. Ibsen had not lost his 
 Scandinavian enthusiasm of 1848, and the issues 
 of the present contest filled him with distress and 
 anxiety. With his fervid poetic temperament, he 
 could not understand, and much less share, the 
 hesitancy which withheld the Norwegian Parliament 
 from coming to the support of Denmark. But 
 worse still, in his eyes, was the fact that the student 
 youth of the nation were content to sit still, though 
 they had sworn in their private assemblies — sworn 
 with uplifted champagne - glasses to witness — to 
 sacrifice life and limb for the cause of Denmark : — 
 
 Those generous words that seemed to rush 
 From bold hearts swelling high, — 
 
 Were but a flood of empty gush, 
 And now their stream is dry ! 
 
 The tree, that buds of promise bore 
 Beneath the banquet's light, 
 
 Stands stripped and smitten to its core, 
 
THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 135 
 
 A graveyard cross upon the shore 
 That's ravaged in a night. 
 
 'Twas but a lie in festal song, 
 
 A kiss that Judas gave, 
 .When Norway's sons sang loud and long 
 
 Beside the Danish wave. 
 
 Ml this meanness and cowardliness burnt into his 
 amil; they made his views of human nature more 
 'gloomy than before, and filled him with scorn for 
 the nation he belonged to. He had already begun 
 to conceive but a poor opinion of it. In the 
 " Comedy of Love " he had attacked its crude 
 views in the matter of sentiment and feeling ; and in 
 the historical drama, " Rivals for the Throne," he 
 had found opportunity for an attack on the pettiness 
 and instability of his fellow-countrymen, from which 
 we see that his indignation was rising. We may 
 remind the reader of the famous lines spoken by 
 Bishop Nikolas when he appears to King Skule 
 before he dies as a crusader, in the fifth act : — 
 
 So to their business the Norsemen go, 
 
 Aimlessly wavering, to and fro. 
 
 Their hearts like bladders, their heads like pillows. 
 
 Weak in the wind as an army of willows ; 
 
 Only in one point on earth united, 
 
 That everything noble has got to be spited. 
 
 Waving the pennon of meanness of spirit, 
 
 They harass the forces of honour and merit. 
 
 The ghost-scene in which these lines occur does 
 not, indeed, strictly belong to the action of the piece, 
 
136 THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 
 
 and from the dramatic point of view the mistake is 
 so conspicuous that, in a dramatist of Henrik Ibsen's 
 qualities, it can only be regarded as a vagary of the 
 pen. The fact was simply, that his wrath was by 
 this time so hot within him that he could no longer 
 refrain himself. He had to speak, even if to do so 
 he must burst the very ribs of so well-constructed 
 a dramatic organism as Kongsemnerne. 
 
 And if these had been his feelings in 1863, what 
 effect must not the events of the following winter 
 have produced on him ? What was anything he 
 had hitherto witnessed or experienced in comparison 
 with what he saw and felt during the war ? " The 
 bitter tonic " which was to give him strength to 
 Start on a new path was brewing. He had had 
 enough of Norway and the Norwegians. He must 
 find peace and independence to enable him to filter 
 and utilise all the new ideas and views of life which 
 were fermenting within him. He must escape from 
 the crushing conditions of his life in Christiania, 
 must get away from this narrow circle, must find 
 an opportunity of looking at it all from outside, and 
 from a higher point of view. Here, at home, he 
 must inevitably be ruined as a writer — that he 
 plainly saw; he felt as though he were standing 
 "on the edge of his grave," as he afterwards 
 expressed it in a poem on the millennial festival 
 of the Unity of Norway. And that grave was 
 Christiania, " in the Great Graveyard," as he called 
 Norway : — 
 
THE BATTLE OF LIFE IN CHRISTIANIA. 137 
 
 Come out of this cleft so close 1 
 
 It breathes the air of the pit : 
 
 No dew from the grass of it 
 
 Is shed when the fresh wind blows."] 
 
 In obedience to this impulse he took a step on 
 which his whole life turned ; he addressed a petition 
 to the State for a travelling allowance, and when it 
 was actually granted he hailed it as salvation. 
 
 But even this last transaction in his native land 
 was not untainted by characteristic unpleasantness. 
 The University, through whom the petition was to 
 be granted, would not lag behind the town in such 
 an important detail. In fact, it was on this occasion 
 that the speech was made about the thrashing; and, 
 to crown all, it was proposed that Ibsen should be 
 allowed only half the sum he had applied-for. The 
 pension was so very small that neither fish nor 
 fowl, as the Norwegians say, could have managed 
 to live on it. Ibsen was consequently compelled to 
 go to Councillor Ritterwold, the Minister of Ecclesi- 
 astical Affairs, and lay the whole matter before him, 
 and the result was, that the State-Council granted 
 the whole sum named in the petition. 
 
 On April 2nd, 1864, Ibsen could shake the dust 
 of Christiania from off his feet. May found him in 
 Berlin ; from thence he went to Trieste, and on to 
 Rome. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ATTACKS ON NORWAY (1864-1869). 
 
 The impression made on a Northern who sees Italy 
 or the Mediterranean for the first time is always 
 wonderfully striking ; especially when, like Ibsen, 
 he takes the route by Trieste. Southern Austria 
 is traversed in the darkness of evening and night ; 
 the traveller awakes before sunrise and looks out 
 of the carriage-window. Anything more desolate 
 and barren than the landscape is inconceivable. 
 It is a vast plain covered with weather-worn rocks 
 and boulders, piled into the strangest and most 
 fantastic forms. This is the Karst, as it is called. 
 Presently the sun rises, but its light can give no 
 life to this chaos of grey stones, nor even lend it a 
 less desert aspect. Suddenly there is a turn in the 
 road ; the traveller is riding along a terrace, on a 
 steep hillside overgrown with vineyards, and far 
 below glitters the Adriatic, brightly blue and flecked 
 with white sails shining in the sun to the remotest 
 rim of the sea. Those who have once experienced 
 such a morning never forget it. 
 
 From Trieste the journey to Venice, and beyond, 
 
 138 
 
THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 139 
 
 lies through the most hixuriant and lovely lands. 
 What wealth of vegetation and richness of colour ! 
 There is a blaze, a radiance, a glory of sunlight 
 wherever we look. We almost fancy that we have 
 never before seen any hue but grey. Even the sky 
 is different — higher, bluer, more transparent. And 
 when the sun Sets and darkness falls suddenly, like 
 a surprise, up comes the moon, the splendid moon 
 of the Italian summer night. A faint idea may be 
 formed of it when we remember how beautiful it 
 can be in an August night in Norway. There is a 
 power and splendour in that moonlight which almost 
 makes a man crazy with passionate admiration, as 
 he wanders for hours over moonlit plains, or through 
 dark groves where the glowworms lurk, shining 
 like diamonds among the brushwood. 
 
 And in Ibsen's case, besides these new impres- 
 sions of nature, there was the glamour of ancient 
 culture which met him at every step in the city he 
 had chosen for his residence. The grandeur, the 
 riches, and the beauty of Rome filled him with 
 amazement, and by constant excursions into every 
 part of the city he tried to familiarise himself with 
 its monuments. His search for all these witnesses 
 to a dead civilisation, and his contemplation of the 
 ruins which told of its decay, suggested to him the 
 idea of treating its fall in a dramatic form ; the 
 scheme of a drama, with JuHan the Apostate as the 
 leading figure, was duly meditated and the play 
 partly written. 
 
140 THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 
 
 But Other and more personal impressions gained 
 the upper hand. Their very contrast with his pre- 
 sent life set them more vividly before his mind. 
 He felt as though his whole life in Norway had been 
 spent in the dark. Like Oswald (in " Ghosts ") he 
 felt as if he could not remember ever having seen 
 the sun shining in Norway, as though he had stolen 
 away from a gloomy prison where he had lain in 
 chains ; and like an escaped prisoner who has re- 
 gained his freedom, he vowed never to return thither. 
 How squalid, cold, narrow, and small was every- 
 thing in that Northern home ! 
 
 But up from such thoughts and feelings as these 
 rose a number of earlier impressions of Norwegian 
 nature, vivified by the stimulating contrast of Then 
 and Now. In one of his expeditions at the cost of 
 the State, in search of popular poetry, he had, in the 
 summer of 1 862, gone on foot through Jotunhejm. 
 He had made his way from Lorn across the moun- 
 tain from Baeverdal down to Fortun. The view 
 from the mountain-range down into the narrow For- 
 tundal, with its steep wild precipices, had left a picture 
 which now revived in his mind. And from thence 
 he had walked on from Vadeim by Forde to the 
 little market-town of Hellesylt in Sundelven, where 
 he had remained several days. In the immediate 
 neighbourhood were the ruins of a parsonage which 
 had been destroyed by a landslip from above. In 
 fear of such another fall, it had never been restored ; 
 and the minister, with his wife and child, lodged in 
 
THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 141 
 
 a farmhouse clinging high up to the mountain-side. 
 Ibsen went to visit him, and asked the priest's wife, 
 an amiable young woman, whether she were not 
 equally afraid of such a catastrophe here. "No," 
 said she ; " for the house is built so close against 
 the cliff that the earth and stones would pass by 
 without touching it." 
 
 These impressions of travel amalgamated in 
 Ibsen's fancy to form that picture of the Norse 
 mountain-valley which we know in Brand. And 
 with this Norwegian dale a new concept of Nor- 
 wegian nature found a place in literature. 
 
 The poets of an earlier time had only sung of what 
 was fair, pleasing, and attractive in our out-door life. 
 As he reads their writings a stranger might almost 
 believe that in Norway the whole year was one soft 
 and lovely summer. Kindly sunshine makes even 
 the most barren spot of earth " a radiant little land 
 of fable," as Welhaven says ; in Asbjornsen's tales 
 we read of dehcious wanderings in the forests 
 and mountains, of the fragrance of pines and the 
 song of birds; or of beautiful summer-evening 
 moods, such as Jorgen Moe's poems are full of. 
 And even when the key is not quite so high-pitched, 
 it does not cease to be sweet. A melancholy spirit 
 even, such as that of Bernhard Herre, went no 
 further than to depict the sadness of autumn ; and 
 the elegies of A. Munch dwell only on the brevity 
 of the Northern summer. None of them speak of\ 
 the barrenness and inhospitality of the land. If by 
 
142 THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 
 
 any chance a poet alluded to the scenery of the 
 highlands — as Welhaven, for instance, in Eivind Bolt 
 — ^it is solely to speak of the grandiose impression 
 produced by the mountain landscape ; when winter 
 is the theme, as in Jorgen Moe's En ^laedefari 
 (A Sledge-Drive), the poet has no eye for anything 
 but its magical beauty. Indeed, Ibsen himself paid 
 tribute to the Nature of the North; in his Hoj- 
 fjeldsliv (Highland Life) he has given us a lively 
 and glowing picture of the mountain region " in its 
 glory of gold and amber.'' 
 
 But we have only to take up Brand (a dramatic 
 poem in five acts) to see the contrast. Here we 
 are suddenly transported several degrees farther 
 north, into a quite different land. The snow swirls 
 thickly, the storm roars, the glaciers hang imminent 
 over the cliff's edge, and the sun's rays never 
 penetrate to shine on the dwellers in the depth of 
 the gorge. At midsummer only, for three short 
 weeks, do they see its warming rays, high above 
 them, on the rocky wall. Everything that is frail 
 and tender shivers, sickens, and dies. Corn never 
 ripens ; deformity and famine haunt the place like a 
 curse. This is the mountain valley as we see it in 
 Brand. And the valley had grown in Ibsen's imagi- 
 nation to be the typical Northern landscape. It 
 was actually Norway, in Brand : just as Anholt is 
 Denmark in Ludvig Holberg's Peder Paars} 
 
 1 The great serio-comic classic of Danish literature. L. Holberi^ 
 was born in 1684 ; died 1754. 
 
THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 143 
 
 The inhabitants of the gorge are the whole 
 Norwegian people ; and the picture of the race 
 differs no less from the earlier notions accepted in 
 literature than does the picture of the natural back- 
 ground. Hitherto all our writers had burnt incense 
 to the Norwegian people. After 18 14 enthusiastic 
 verse had been sung in honour of the Sons of the 
 Mountains, and this afQatus had lasted for many 
 decades. When, in the forties, national romance 
 had come to the front, the enthusiasm only changed 
 its aspect. While before, the Odelsmand,^ proud 
 and free, had been the subject of ecstatic adulation, 
 it was now the turn of the ideal peasant or Bonde, 
 leading his peaceful life free from care, in poetic 
 dreams undebased by his prosaic daily toil. 
 
 The people in Ibsen's mountain-valley are no 
 such poetic figures. They are folk who labour 
 bitterly to wring a pittance from grudging Nature, 
 and the burden stultifies and exhausts them; it 
 bows their necks and bends their backs ; their eyes 
 are fixed on the earth, their thoughts do not soar 
 like a bird, they creep like a worm on its belly. 
 Their daily food is all they care for, all they think 
 
 about :— 
 
 Feeble is the flight, and low, 
 That to your faint prayer is given ; 
 Yours is not the piercing woe 
 That on will's strong pinions driven 
 Penetrates the court of heaven ; 
 
 1 The owner of a freehold. 
 
144 THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 
 
 " Give, oh ! give us daily bread ! " — 
 From its context torn, you cry ; 
 All the other prayers unsaid, 
 For this one you live and die ; 
 Only this poor wreck survives 
 In your faith-desolated lives. 
 
 But if these people are wholly and solely " a race 
 given over to earthly cares," at least they might 
 be full of character. On the contrary, when they 
 turn their left eye heavenward, their right eye is 
 fixed on the earth. Hence the half-heartedness and 
 apathy which are the stamp of the nation : — ■ 
 
 Just wander thro' this land to-day 
 And listen to what people say. 
 And thou wilt find to each man cling 
 A little piece of everything ; 
 He's slightly loyal on the whole, 
 A little serious for his soul, 
 A little given to table-pleasure, — 
 But so his fathers were, in measure, — 
 A little warm, when hearth and hall 
 Re-echo songs about " the small 
 But rock-firm people of the rock. 
 Who at all foreign menace mock," 
 A little prodigal of pledges, 
 A little smart to blunt their edges, 
 A little quick to start, but clever 
 In dawdling on and on for ever. 
 The words " a little " gauge his spirit, 
 He goes not far in fault or merit ; 
 In good and ill alike a fraction. 
 Restlessly passive, faint in action. 
 Made up of fragments, each sufficient 
 To spoil the other's coefficient. 
 
THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 145 
 
 And as the nation is, so is its notion of God : — 
 
 As Papists feign our souls' Redeemer 
 
 A baby on His Mother's breast, 
 You fancy God a worn-out dreamer 
 
 In second childhood sunk to rest. . . 
 The race is old, and paints its God 
 With velvet cap and senile nod. 
 
 And while thus attacking the nation, the poet 
 turns his keen-edged weapon against the official re- 
 presentatives ; chiefly the village-mayor, who has 
 become the mere official to such a degree that he 
 has altogether ceased to be a man. When he ought 
 to relieve the needy he does not inquire into their 
 necessities, but only whether they dwell within his 
 district or no ; and if his house is burning he gives 
 his soul over to the devil if only he may save the 
 archives. He is a well-meaning man, who toils hard 
 for the good of his district, but he has no eye for 
 anything but material prosperity. The growth of 
 the population, the increase of revenue, the develop- 
 ment of trade — these are the services of which he 
 boasts ; and his highest dream of beneficence is the 
 erection of a building which shall ingeniously com- 
 bine rooms for public entertainments and elections 
 with a prison, a lunatic-asylum, and a poor-house. 
 If only this scheme could be carried out, every re- 
 quirement would be satisfied. Anything beyond 
 this is mischievous, unless it be a very little senti- 
 ment in the evening hours, and a very little eloquent 
 excitement when the punch is brought in after a 
 
146 THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 
 
 public dinner. He is not merely a mayor, but a 
 Storthingsmand (a member of the Norwegian 
 Parliament) as well, and in this capacity too he gets 
 a lashing when Brand says of him that he is 
 
 A full-blooded patriot head. 
 Right-minded, courteous, free from passion. 
 And not inactive, in a fashion, 
 And yet a scourge to lash men dead. 
 No fierce infection of the blood. 
 No famine, landshp, frost, or flood. 
 That blights a province through and through. 
 Does half the damage he can do ; 
 Life can be v^on from pestilence, 
 But he destroys man's very sense ; 
 He chains the will that's strong and young. 
 He drowns the songs that might be sung. 
 His pinched and pigeon-breasted mind 
 Goes out to murder his own kind. 
 To slay the smile on simple lips, 
 To veil the soul's light in eclipse, 
 And with a bloodless arm to smother 
 The love hearts bear to one another. 
 
 The Provost is even worse. Just as the Mayor 
 relegates everything that may improve the mind to 
 leisure hours and festal occasions, so does he keep 
 everything like religion for Sunday. On working 
 days men must work; only on Sunday have they 
 time to rest, and then it is the priest's duty to lead 
 them to the ideal ; but as soon as he is out of the 
 pulpit his task is done. A preacher has no concern 
 with the souls of the individuals of his congregation ; 
 he is first and foremost an official in the service 
 
THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 147 
 
 of the State, whose duty is to consider what is best 
 for the State, and then what is best for himself. 
 
 Finally, in the Schoolmaster and the Sexton the 
 official element of the lower orders is held up to 
 ridicule. The Schoolmaster, who, like the iVIayor, 
 has been a member of the Storthing, says to his 
 colleague : — 
 
 But, then, we two obey a different law 
 
 From that which holds the mountain-side in awe. 
 
 We're sworn official guardians of the district, 
 
 Bound to each other in a close relation ; 
 
 We must protect the Church and education ; 
 
 The rule which keeps us isolated is strict ; 
 
 To stand outside all party's our vocation. 
 
 And afterwards, when they hear Brand playing the 
 organ, we have this characteristic dialogue : — 
 
 Schoolmaster, 
 Hum ! some folks might be stirred to hear ! 
 
 Sexton. 
 But not a public officer. 
 
 Schoolmaster. 
 
 Ah ! some one of a free condition, 
 Not bound to think of his position. 
 
 Sexton. 
 
 Yes ! one who'd dare to throw away 
 His books — and have the devil to pay. 
 
 Schoolmaster. 
 
 Ah ! but to stop the official wheel, 
 And dare to feel one moment, Sexton ! 
 
148 THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 
 
 Sexton. 
 Nobody's looking — let us feel ! 
 
 Schoolmaster. 
 
 No ! one would find that it had vexed one 
 To have sunk to common people's sphere ; 
 We must not wish to feel, I fear. 
 The parson says, to try to be 
 Two things at once will never do ; 
 Even he who wants to, can't, you see, 
 Be man and functionary too. 
 
 These several outbreaks against the official class, 
 as the cause of the ineptitude and materialism of the 
 people, had their origin partly in the conditions of 
 the times, and partly in the conception of the State 
 which had grown up in Ibsen's mind under the 
 direct influence of that State. 
 
 A large portion of the years which had elapsed 
 between Ibsen's first manhood and his departure 
 from Norway had been a period of dull unspiri- 
 tuality. But it had been a golden age for the 
 official class, a time when adroit administration had 
 played an important part. Some questions of 
 national independence had no doubt occasionally 
 arisen — such as the Theatre question, and the 
 Ministerial question — and had given rise to violent 
 agitations, but the men who had stirred up these 
 movements were regarded by the majority as dis- 
 turbers of the peace and frenzied demagogues. The 
 
THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY, 149 
 
 point aimed at was not the independence of the 
 nation, far less its spiritual evolution, but simply its 
 economical prosperity. Roads were laid, huge and 
 handsome prisons were constructed, commerce was 
 extended, manufactures were encouraged, unions 
 were formed to repress dram-drinking, and many 
 more or less useful things were achieved. The 
 only misfortune was that by such means men be- 
 lieved that they were solving the great problems of 
 Government. Everything which lay beyond the 
 province of the necessaries of life was mere rhodo- 
 montade, to be sternly reprehended. The people 
 were to be as uniform and commonplace as the 
 clerks in an office, or the soldiers of a regiment. 
 The ideal of a good citizen was an average mortal 
 of no marked character or individuality, whose rule 
 of life was to walk the earth in humble self-annihila- 
 tion. The Provost's speech was typical: — 
 
 Consider what a feeble flock 
 
 Ye are, and from how mean a stock ; 
 
 Born for no stalwart deeds are ye, 
 
 Unfit to set the captive free ; 
 
 Ye have your little daily task, 
 
 And more than that we dare not ask. 
 
 What would ye betwixt wolf and bear ? 
 
 'Twixt hawk and eagle battling there .' 
 
 My sheep, my children ! learn, ye are 
 
 The victor's prize, the gage of war. 
 
 It was to this base materialism that Ibsen attributed 
 Norway's indifferent attitude during the Danish- 
 
I50 THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 
 
 German war; he returns to the charge again and 
 again in his writings. 
 
 Still, the root of the evil lay deeper than in any 
 merely local conditions of the times. It was firmly 
 rooted in the modern notion of the State, and it was 
 against this that our author directed his weapons, 
 in the name of freedom and individuality. It is 
 the Provost again who unconsciously leads the 
 battle : — 
 
 The State's — deny it if you can- — 
 
 Exactly half republican ; 
 
 No good in freedom will it see, 
 
 Yet dearly loves equality ; 
 
 But how can all mankind be equal 
 
 Till all are smoothed to one dead plane ? 
 
 You preach this oneness, but the sequel 
 
 Proves all your levelling projects vain ; 
 
 Your democratic schemes imply 
 
 More individuality, 
 
 And wider range in low and high. 
 
 The task in hand is to make every one march in 
 
 time : — 
 
 An equal space for every step, 
 And keeping every foot in line ; — 
 It's to that system I incline. 
 
 The ideal leader is a corporal ; and the Church, 
 which, as a State establishment, is part of the 
 regulating machinery of the State, must adopt this 
 method in every particular. The preacher must 
 learn of the corporal to lead his troop through life 
 into Paradise at a firm and steady pace. 
 
THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 151 
 
 Thus the attack on the people of Norway leads to 
 a satire on the official class ; and on the established 
 Church as its tool. 
 
 Brand himself is in every respect the opposite of 
 all that Ibsen attacks. All that the people lack he 
 has in abundance ; he is the incarnation of deter- 
 mination and idealism, of strength and enthusiasm. 
 In the energy of his individuaHty he opposes the 
 predominant spirit of compromise with the inexorable 
 motto, " All or nothing ; " and as advocate for the 
 rights of the individual he fights the official repre- 
 sentative of the people, both on secular and spiritual 
 grounds. To think of Brand as embodying Ibsen 
 himself would be absurd ; for although Brand is an 
 ideal figure, he, like all of Ibsen's creations, is not 
 complete from the first ; he develops as the action 
 of the piece proceeds. Though Ibsen always stands 
 behind his utterances, he is never to be identified 
 with his hero. What he has tried to create is an 
 ideal contrast with the reality he is satirising : and 
 this has determined the aspect of the man. His 
 development is worked out by his gradual recogni- 
 tion of the impossibility of harmonising this contrast. 
 His efforts are directed to awakening and steeling 
 the people, so that each man, as a free indivividual, 
 shall shake off his lethargy. So he declares war 
 against their official representative in the person 
 of the Mayor in these words : — 
 
 Those, whom your leaders without number 
 Have lulled to sleep, shall wake from slumber. 
 
152 THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 
 
 These remnants of our mountain-stuff 
 
 Have pined in cages long enough ; 
 
 Your mean starvation-regimen 
 
 Produces weak and mopish men ; 
 
 'Tis you have drained their blood avi^ay, 
 
 Have doomed their courage to decay, 
 
 Have stamped in fragments of a whole 
 
 What should have stood a moulded soul ; — 
 
 Yet still within your ears may rattle 
 
 The awakening thunder-shout " To battle ! " 
 
 He begins this struggle against the authorities by 
 first becoming such an official personage himself: 
 he becomes minister of his native parish. Life and 
 movement begin to stir around him ; but he is not 
 wholly satisfied, he feels that under the conditions 
 in which he is working there is not room enough for 
 his ideal. The old Church is too small for the God 
 he preaches, so he determines to build a large new 
 one ; but the execution of this plan leads him to 
 discern that he, the preacher of logic, has placed 
 himself in an ambiguous and illogical predicament. 
 The Provost's words as to the relation of the Church 
 to the State rouse him to a clear apprehension of 
 this, and by asserting that the " Spirit of compro- 
 mise " is of the devil, he is led to the great and fatal 
 breach which is figuratively expressed by his locking 
 the church door and throwing the key into the 
 torrent. What is tragical in his fate is that he 
 acquires too late the insight which leads to this 
 breach, and that he has made his great sacrifice in 
 vain, because, bravely as he has striven for whole- 
 
THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 153 
 
 ness and completeness of achievement, he has lived 
 unconsciously under the influence of that spirit of 
 concession which he designates as the tempter. 
 Brand is no ideal figure in the ordinary sense of the 
 word ; he is a struggling soul which is developed by 
 the struggle ; and however truly he may be the 
 advocate of Ibsen's own polemical views, Ibsen has 
 treated him objectively in so far as he has made 
 him a man, and not a mouthpiece. 
 
 Artistically speaking, he is a creation of the imagi- 
 nation, not a figure from real life. This arises from 
 the fact that he was planned as a contrasting image ; 
 he is to contrast with reality, not to embody it. 
 Nevertheless, the germ of this figure is to be de- 
 tected in various impressions from real life. 
 
 At the time when Brand was published it was 
 accepted as an essentially Christian poem — princi- 
 pally, no doubt, because Brand himself is a priest. 
 Then it came to be regarded as a sort of commina- 
 tory sermon, on the pattern of those which reek 
 of sulphur-fumes and hell-fire. But Ibsen had 
 already anticipated such a misapprehension of his 
 purpose. He makes Einar take this mistaken view 
 of the matter when he says to Brand : — 
 
 Thou art of that young brood that cries 
 Life is made up of mockeries, — 
 One who the world of feeling dashes 
 Pell-mell into a sack of ashes. 
 
 To which Brand replies : — 
 
1 54 THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 
 
 I am no death's-head at Ufe's feast ; 
 I speak not as a parish priest ; 
 I take my place in nature's plan, 
 Not as a Christian, but a man, 
 And diagnose, with doctor's eye. 
 This deadly thing whereof we die. 
 
 In these last four lines Brand's whole nature is set 
 forth with the crisp decision of an explanatory note ; 
 and lest it should fail of clearness, he says soon 
 after : — 
 
 It is not churches, no, nor creeds 
 
 For sake of which my spirit bleeds ; 
 
 Since, as both saw an opening day, 
 
 So both may fade and pass away ; 
 
 Created things, though fair we find them. 
 
 Have Finis somewhere graved behind them. 
 
 One thing is quite clear : it is the Man, the indivi- 
 dual personality, that he desires to lift out of the 
 dust. This standpoint, it is plain, is far from being 
 that of the pietist. We have only to read such lines 
 as these : — 
 
 Nay ! joy destroys no human breast, — 
 Tliough if it were so, it were best. 
 Be not the slave of thy delight, 
 Yet serve it on from night to night. 
 Be not one thing to-day, and borrow 
 Some other semblance for to-morrow. 
 That which thou art, be wholly it. 
 Not piecemeal — and from bit to bit. 
 
 and we cannot fail to see the universal and purely 
 human character of his aim. Just as hostile argu- 
 
THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 155 
 
 ment against the Church is but a small part of the 
 polemics of the poem, so is religious sentiment but 
 a small part of Brand's individuality. Ibsen, too, 
 has himself told us that there was no necessity for 
 making Brand a priest, or for stating the problem 
 as a religious one. 
 
 " I could quite equally well have applied the \ 
 whole syllogism to a sculptor or a politician as to a 
 priest. I could quite as well have worked out the 
 impulse which drove me to write the piece, by 
 taking Galileo, for instance, as my leading figure, 
 instead of Brand — assuming, of course, that Galileo 
 should stand firm, and never concede the fixity 
 of the earth," he wrote in a letter to George 
 Brandes. 
 
 It is, nevertheless, by no mere accident that 
 Brand is a priest ; it is the result of the realistic 
 impressions, which form as it were the skeleton of 
 the figure, having originated in Church matters. 
 Danish critics, among them Brandes, followed by 
 the majority of German critics who have written 
 on Ibsen within the last few years, have connected 
 Brand with Soren Abye Kierkegaard,^ and are of 
 opinion that his ideas and his attacks on the Church 
 gave rise to this drama. It is easy to see how this 
 misunderstanding may have arisen among foreigners 
 unfamiliar with Norwegian affairs; for that such a 
 resemblance exists cannot be disputed. When 
 
 1 1813-1855. The most remarkable religious philosopher whom 
 Denmark has produced. 
 
156 THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 
 
 Kierkegaard laments the wretchedness of the times, 
 when he appeals to the individual personality of 
 each human being and condemns society, when he 
 attacks public Christianity from a Catholic human 
 standpoint, when he, himself a theologian who had 
 preached to the multitude, could declare in his later 
 years that he would rather commit the grossest 
 crime than ever enter a church again, it is easy to 
 detect his resemblance to Brand. At the same 
 time the comparison fails if we seek such a type 
 as Brand in the character of Kierkegaard. When 
 Brand was written Ibsen knew very little of Kierke- 
 gaard ; he had not read many pages of his writings ; 
 a few of Enter-eller (Either — or — ) and of Ojeblikket 
 (the Present Moment), and that was all. ^ Of course 
 the agitation produced in Norway by Kierkegaard's 
 works was a known fact ; but it made no very deep 
 impression on Ibsen, and he never felt himself 
 moved to become " Kierkegaard's poet," though he 
 was called so. 
 
 But the thing which had greatly attracted his 
 attention was the battle fought out in his native 
 town of Skien, towards the end of the fifties, by 
 pastor G. A. Lammers. Lammers was six-and- 
 forty, and had been a priest above twenty years 
 when he was appointed to the ministry at Skien. 
 
 1 In Enter-eller, 1843, the aesthetic and ethical ways of life are con- 
 trasted. Ojeblikket was a sort of periodical ; only nine numbers were 
 published, in the last year of Kierkegaard's life. In this he argues 
 against "Official Christianity." A mere glance into this might indeed 
 have affected Ibsen deeply. 
 
THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 157 
 
 He presently after made a long journey abroad for 
 the benefit of his health, and it was on his return 
 home that he started the religious movement which 
 was afterwards known by his name. The whole 
 thing began in certain pangs of conscience which 
 he felt when pronouncing absolution and fulfilling 
 certain other priestly duties. In the year 1855 he 
 wished to be allowed a curate to undertake such 
 functions as he no longer dared to exercise. But 
 at last even this failed to relieve his mind, and in 
 June, 1856, he begged and received his dismissal 
 with a pension. He forthwith took a step which 
 deprived him of this allowance; he renounced his 
 allegiance to the established Church, and founded 
 a " free apostolic Christian congregation " at Skien. 
 In his petition to retire he had stated that his 
 yearly income was no more than 5000 krone ^ from 
 his parish, and that he was the father of two chil- 
 dren otherwise unprovided for. His labours in 
 Skien had been productive of much agitation — eager 
 support from some, hostility, scorn, and mockery 
 from others. " He unhesitatingly censured disorder 
 and crime, even in domestic and civic life,'' we are 
 told in a picture of him written at the time. He 
 would send his curate or the schoolmaster "into 
 the town and to every house in it, bearing his greet- 
 ing, and with instructions to inquire as far as 
 might be possible into the worldly and spiritual 
 
 1 The krone is worth rather more than thirteen pence, or twenty- 
 eight cents. 
 
158 THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 
 
 condition of every member of the congregation." 
 He was an imperious and inexorable " father of 
 souls," who stormed vehemently against all weak- 
 ness and worldliness. 
 
 But if he had given rise to much restlessness 
 and ebullition while he still was a servant of the 
 established Church, he made matters far worse 
 when he had quitted it. His farewell sermon is 
 printed, and is very interesting reading. Never 
 was the Norwegian Church so fiercely assailed 
 from its own pulpit. He had on a previous 
 occasion spoken of the churches as playhouses ; 
 in his farewell address he gives proofs of his 
 assertion. The Sacraments ought not to be ad- 
 ministered to every comer ; only those who " in 
 truth turn to the Lord." " The unrepentant and 
 disbelieving are to have no part in them, even 
 though they may not be recognised sinners ; unless 
 they declare that they will be converted." Infant 
 baptism too is mpnstrous : " Rather let our children 
 remain unbaptized and unblessed. Rather let us 
 be honest heathen than allow ourselves to be led 
 by mere neighbourly considerations, to make use 
 of the institutions of the Church to increase and 
 bring up a generation of liars and hypocrites." 
 
 He was equally averse to any religious ceremony 
 of marriage or burial. "Indeed, I may say that 
 so-called Christian burial in so-called consecrated 
 ground has been angiiish to my soul, and seems 
 to me a horrible confirmation of disbelief and im- 
 
THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 159 
 
 penitence; not merely when false and delusive 
 words are spoken over the dead, the more shocking 
 in proportion as the departed and those who have 
 followed him to the grave belong to the cultured 
 and intelligent class ; but even when they are words 
 of truth intended to arouse the living, and when, 
 though he who is laid in the earth cannot with 
 any reasonable hope be accounted as one of those 
 who die in the Lord, he is nevertheless dedicated 
 with flowers and hymns to a joyful resurrection. 
 We are not called upon to pronounce judgment 
 on the dead ; but not, on the other hand, to absolve 
 them." And after much more in the same vein he 
 ended his sermon with a prayer "that, if it were 
 possible, the day might come when, in this so-called 
 house of God, nothing might ever be done contrary 
 to God's will; and that here in this lovely valley, 
 which the hand of God would seem to have decked 
 to be His garden, in our streets and roads, in our 
 houses and fields, on our seas and in our forests, 
 no word of blasphemy should evermore be heard, 
 no church service ever be performed, but only 
 the worship of God in spirit and in truth, on 
 holidays and working days alike." 
 
 Ibsen had known Lammers personally, and his 
 manly, courageous conduct had impressed him 
 greatly. It is easy to find points of resemblance 
 between Lammers and Brand, even in minor details ; 
 and when, after this, Lammers gathered his ad- 
 herents about him and led them away to the fields 
 
i6o THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 
 
 or heights, there to worship God, we again note a 
 startling hkeness. " Kierkegaard was too much 
 of a drawing-room agitator," Ibsen once observed 
 to the autlior of this biography ; " Lammers on 
 the contrary was just such an open-air agitator 
 as Brand is." But in this, as in other cases, 
 Ibsen's attitude to his material is a very inde- 
 pendent one ; it was his starting point, but not 
 his goal. He never intended to give the portrait 
 and elucidate the nature of such another man as 
 Lammers ; he merely made such use of him as was 
 needful for his purpose. 
 
 This purpose was to emphasise the difference 
 between "the thing as it was and the thing as it 
 ought to be." 
 
 This is also seen by the keen style and form 
 of the writing. It is a denunciation, a comminatory 
 sermon. It deals with matters of life and death ; 
 there is no question of compromise. Ibsen originally 
 began the work as an epic poem, and when he sub- 
 sequently adopted the dramatic form he observed 
 its conditions only so far as they were compatible 
 with his polemical aims. He did not trouble himself 
 about the requirements of probability and strict 
 dramatic causation. In the ideal sphere in which 
 his hero moves such considerations are of minor 
 importance ; indeed, he did not even care to make 
 his personages express themselves exactly as they 
 probably would have done in real life. His satirical 
 and polemical aim was so entirely predominant that 
 
THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. i6i 
 
 he makes them rage at themselves in grotesque self- 
 description. When Einar becomes a convert he 
 says of himself : — 
 
 I'm cleansed and rinsed, above, below ; 
 I'm scrubbed with faith from top to toe ; 
 No fleck of mud clings to my dress 
 In the washing-tub of holiness ; 
 By circumspection's dolly smacked, 
 My Adam's garments shine intact ; 
 And from the laundry-soap of prayer 
 I rise a surplice, snowy-fair. 
 
 And the Mayor, the Provost, the Schoolmaster, 
 and the Sexton do not spare themselves. It is 
 war to the knife from beginning to end; there is 
 no quarter ; no truce is possible, excepting in the 
 scenes where Agnes appears. She is the pacifying 
 element in this sharp storm of battle, she is like a 
 warm flowing current in the middle of an ice-bound 
 river ; all the warmth, all the wealth of feeling which 
 the poet saw around and about him, found utterance 
 in this figure, and she has a wonderful effect in the 
 surroundings among which he has placed her. The 
 still home-life, which Ibsen, in spite of his strong feel- 
 ing for it, treated so unmercifully in the " Comedy 
 of Love," finds compensation here in the person of 
 Agnes ; and when the writer at last represents the 
 platform on which the fight was waged as being 
 swept away by an avalanche, we step back from it 
 with a complete impression of sweetness and bitter- 
 ness, of longing for peace and yet also for battle. 
 
1 62 THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 
 
 This impression gives an accurate notion of the 
 author. His naturally gentle nature has, in the 
 rough struggle of life, armed itself with breastplate 
 and sword ; but his heart beats as warmly as ever 
 under the coat of mail. 
 
 r 
 
 The battle was hot ended with Brand. In the 
 following year Ibsen came forth once more, armed 
 cap-a-pie with another dramatic poem. Peer Gynt 
 is nearly related to Brand. If Brand is the 
 antipodes, Peer Gynt is the representative of the 
 Norwegian people ; the former shows what it lacks, 
 the latter shows what it is. In Brand's description 
 of the Norwegian race we have a foreshadowing of 
 Peer Gynt. It is all to be found in these lines, 
 quoted before : — 
 
 Just wander through this land to-day 
 And listen to what people say, 
 And thou wilt find to each man cling 
 A little scrap of everything. . . . 
 
 The words " a little " gauge his spirit, 
 He goes not far in fault or merit ; 
 In good or ill alike a fraction, 
 Restlessly passive, faint in action, 
 Made up of fragments, each sufficient 
 To mar the others' co-efficient. 
 
 Peer Gynt himself is stamped as typical of the 
 nation, all the deficiencies Ibsen had noted in it 
 are in him ; he is hesitancy, weakness, and egoism 
 
THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 163 
 
 personified. If we do not keep this well in mind a 
 great deal in the poem becomes unintelligible, and 
 we are in danger of much misapprehension. Even 
 George Brandes has not escaped this peril. He 
 quotes the song of the Noster from the fifth act : — 
 
 We are thoughts ; 
 
 Thou should'st have thought us. 
 
 We are a riddle ; 
 
 Thou should'st have solved us. 
 
 We are works ; 
 
 Thou should'st have performed us. 
 
 And he adds this comment : " Accusing words, these, 
 with which the poet may perhaps have spurred 
 himself on in hours of weakness, but which we 
 cannot possibly think of as self-accusation on the 
 part of Peer Gynt. How should the miserable Peer 
 ever have given any one a watchword, how should 
 he blame himself for having neglected it ? " If we 
 regard Peer Gynt as typical of the nation, the 
 accusation has a sense without our needing to take 
 refuge in the far-fetched notion that the whole 
 song was a personal outburst on the part of the 
 poet. The scene on the coast of Morocco, where 
 Peer Gynt is brought into contact with other 
 national types, has a strangely whimsical aspect 
 until we give prominence to his representative 
 national character. 
 
 At the same time. Peer Gynt would not have 
 
1 64 THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 
 
 been so sterling and living a work, if the author 
 had maintained this typical character throughout. 
 He began with an abstraction, but ended by de- 
 picting a living individual. 
 
 Peer Gynt is not perhaps so much the Norwegian 
 in general as he is the Nonvegian of a particular 
 period, namely, of the close of the romantic period. 
 Even in Brafidwe find scattered hits at the romantic 
 element — for instance, the Mayor's enthusiasm over 
 the times of King Bele — but here the ball is aimed 
 straight at the heart of romanticism. There are, in 
 various literary works, allied types of the transition 
 period between the romantic school and our own day. 
 In Turguenefif's Rudin, Spielhagen's Problematische 
 Naturen, and later in Schandorp's Uden Midpunkt 
 (Without a Centre), we find figures which have this 
 in common with Peer Gynt ; but they are fantastic 
 images, without sufficient substance to give us a 
 sense of reality. Ibsen, however, has gone to work 
 in his own fashion. While other writers have 
 chosen their heroes out of the upper classes, he 
 has taken his from among the people. Peer Gynt 
 is not a product of artistic romanticism, but of the 
 popular national romanticism on which the more 
 artistic type was based. It is well known that 
 Ibsen borrowed not only the name of Peer Gynt, 
 but various other details, from Asbjornsen's and 
 Moe's Folkeeventyr and from Asbjornsen's Huldre- 
 eventyr ;'^ and it is expressly stated in the drama 
 
 1 Popular tales, and fairy tales. 
 
THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 165 
 
 that the germ of Peer Gynt's whimsicahties lay in 
 the legends on which his mother brought him up, 
 so to speak. Aase says : — 
 
 We knew no better plan than to forget ; 
 
 For 'tis too hard to struggle against fate, 
 
 To see its grim shape reared athwart one's vision, 
 
 And try to press those thronging thoughts aside ; 
 
 One man tries brandy, and another lies ! 
 
 Ah ! well, we tried the charm of fairy-stories. 
 
 To the reader who now takes up Peer Gynt this 
 juxtaposition of brandy and fairy-tales does not 
 seem so appropriate ; but twenty years ago it was a 
 very different thing; it was a slap in the face for 
 everything which at that time was still current in 
 literature. - 
 
 The education bestowed on Peer Gynt had borne 
 fruit ; as we first see him he is a fantastic visionary, 
 who goes about in a waking dream instead of doing 
 anything methodical. When he tells the story of 
 Gudbrand Glesne's ride over the edge of the pre- 
 cipice — the Gjendihoide — on the back of a reindeer, 
 he firmly believes that he did it himself, though his 
 notion of the Gjendihoide is so inexact that it is 
 evident he has never seen it. A moment after, he 
 falls into a reverie at the sight of a wonderful cloud, 
 forgets the wedding guests and everything else, and 
 fancies he is riding that cloud as an emperor. And 
 when he nevertheless screws up his courdge to 
 action, it is through defiance, the motive power of 
 all weak natures. Out of defiance he flies with 
 
166 THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 
 
 Ingrid ; and the deed is in itself so ill-considered, 
 so crazy and eccentric, that none but a visionary 
 could have done it. For a minute indeed it dawns 
 upon him that a life of action is better than a life of 
 dreaming; he feels as though the whole population 
 were hunting him like a wild animal : — 
 
 Burst ! shatter ! outclamour the waterfall ! 
 Strike ! rend up the pine-tree, roots and all ! 
 This is life ! this will harden and nourish the mind ! 
 To hell with the lies that we left behind ! 
 
 But this aspiration is of brief duration. Ere 
 long he is again so lost in rhapsody that he can 
 scarcely distinguish between the facts of his ex- 
 perience and the events which are but the fiction 
 of his dreams : — 
 
 Flight over the Gjendi passes — 
 
 A cursfed ballad of lies ! 
 The bride's ride over the precipice — 
 
 A dream in a drunken guise ! 
 Hunted by kites and kestrils, 
 
 Threatened by trolly, and nursed 
 By crazy maids of the mountain — 
 
 A ballad of lies accurst ! 
 
 And whenever he meets with the serious realities 
 of life, he clutches at the means of escape which his 
 mother taught him, and flies to the world of phan- 
 tasy, to 
 
 Forget what is false and awry, 
 And all that is sore and rough. 
 
 He always goes round and outside everything, 
 
THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 167 
 
 never straight through ; even by his mother's death- 
 bed he will not look truth in the face, but beguiles 
 her and himself away from it. What a difference 
 between Brand's hard but high-minded conduct at 
 his mother's death, and this pitiful rhapsodising, 
 giving his mother the viaticum of a lie ! Aase's 
 death was undoubtedly imagined by Ibsen- as the 
 contrast to that of Brand's mother. 
 
 The double existence lived by Peer Gynt neces- 
 sarily results in a genuinely romantic half-hearted- 
 ness ; it gives rise to cowardice and indecision, 
 selfishness and blundering ; it sets an impassable 
 gulf between desire and action, between the will and 
 the energy to act. His motto is characteristic of 
 him : — 
 
 Yes ! think it and wish it, as much as you will, 
 But do it ! No, that will I never ! 
 
 Everything that Peer Gynt does is but half-done. 
 He never can make up his mind to any decisive step, 
 whether for good or evil ; he destroys with one hand 
 what he has done with the other ; he is devoid of 
 character, and his image is a blurred one. He must 
 be thrown back into the melting-pot, for he has not 
 developed into a real man, but only into an egoist, 
 the misshapen image of a man who is not " himself" 
 (true to himself) but only " self-sufficient." When 
 we read Peer Cynt we are involuntarily reminded 
 of H. C. Oersted's maxim, " Forget your Self, but 
 do not lose your Self." It is the very essence of 
 
1 68 THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 
 
 Peer Gynt that his life is the converse of this 
 precept : he has lost his Self, but he never for- 
 gets it. 
 
 Thus the figure originally intended to typify the 
 nation becomes typical of the period which Ibsen 
 himself had known in its final phase, and with which 
 he has broken once for all in Brand and Peer Gynt. 
 There is far less of direct satire in Peer Gynt than 
 in Brand. In all the first three acts we find only 
 one ironical passage on Norwegian exclusiveness, 
 uttered in the patriotic maxim of the Old Man of 
 the Dovre : — 
 
 The ox gives mead and the cow gives flour, — 
 Ask not if it be sweet or sour ; 
 The main thing is, and don't you forget it, 
 You haven't to go from home to get it. 
 
 And a similar satire on the Maalstraeverne ^ 
 is introduced in the scene in the madhouse at 
 Cairo, where Huhu describes the language of the 
 ourang-outang : — 
 
 Listen ! In the East afar 
 Stands the coast of Malabar. 
 Europe Hke a hungry vulture ' 
 Overpowers the land with culture, 
 
 1 Maalstraeverne (the strivers for speech), as they were called, were 
 a party who aimed at forming a Norwegian language distinct from the 
 Danish. There are, in fact, only a relatively small number of essentially 
 Norwegian words. 
 
THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 169 
 
 For the Dutch and Portuguese 
 Hold the country at their ease. 
 Where the natives once held sway, 
 Now their chiefs are driven away ; 
 And the new lords have combined 
 In a language to their mind. 
 In the olden days long fled, 
 Th' Ourang-Outang was lord and head, 
 He was chief by wood and flood, 
 Snared and slaughtered as he would ; 
 As the hand of nature shaped, 
 So he grinned and so he gaped ; 
 Unabashed he howled and yelled. 
 For the reins of state he held. 
 Out alas ! for Progress came, 
 And destroyed his name and fame ; 
 All the monkey-men with ears 
 Vanished for four hundred years ; 
 If we now would preach or teach, 
 We must use the help of speech. 
 I alone have striven hard 
 To become a monkey-bard ; 
 I have vivified the dream, 
 Proved the people's right to scream, 
 Screamed myself, and, by inditing, 
 Showed its use in folk-song writing. 
 Oh ! that I could make men see 
 The bliss of being apes like me. 
 
 The two other madmen who appear in that scene 
 are also intended as a direct satire on things 
 Norwegian ; but the irony is so covert that it can 
 scarcely be understood without some explanation 
 of its purport. The " Fellah with the corpse of his 
 king on his back" is meant for Sweden, and the 
 
I70 THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 
 
 corpse is that of Charles XII. Like this Fellah, 
 Sweden is very proud of its hero-king, but without 
 showing during the Danish-German war that in any 
 way it resembled him, save only that, like him, 
 it "remained perfectly dead." And the Minister 
 Hussein, who fancies that he is a pen, is a sym- 
 bolical hit all round at the senseless addresses 
 and notes which the Franco-German war elicited 
 from the Swedo-Norwegian authorities : especially 
 from one conspicuous Swedish statesman, who was 
 extremely proud of his " notes " throughout the 
 war, and firmly believed that they had exercised 
 a decisive influence on the course of events. The 
 drama is on the whole worked out on the lines of 
 a general poetical and psychological scheme, rather 
 than from the satirical point of view ; and by giving 
 his hero the aspect of a transitional class of the nine- 
 teenth century world, the poet has created a type 
 of which the truth is of general application beyond 
 the Hmits of Norway or the North. Thus Passarge, 
 who translated the poem into German, says of it : 
 " Peer Gynt, like every great poem, is a picture 
 of Man, always strugghng, always erring, always 
 striving for liberty. It takes rank with the Odyssey, 
 the Divina Commedia, Don Quixote, and Faust. 
 Peer Gynt, with all its defects, is the poem which 
 bears most clearly the sign-manual of our times on 
 its brow; and if only a full commentary were 
 written, to throw light on it as a whole and in all 
 its details, many of them mere allusions to things 
 
THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 171 
 
 of the day, it would remain to future generations 
 a faithful reflection of our century, and constantly 
 excite the admiration of posterity." 
 
 After this splendid overture, the curtain rose, 
 in 1869, on the first genuine comedy of modern 
 life which Norwegian literature ever produced. In 
 the " Comedy of Love," Ibsen had already made 
 an attempt in this direction ; but at that time his 
 indignation was too hot, and the outcome was 
 polemical, not a comedy. He lashed his dramatis 
 persons instead of merely showing up their ridiculous 
 side. In Brand the surges of his wrath had risen 
 still higher, and Ibsen had devoted his pen almost 
 wholly to argument and vituperation. But in Peer 
 Gyfit they had already sunk to a calm, and when he 
 wrote De Unges Forbund(Ths. Young Men's League) 
 in 1868-69, the poet's temper was so far pacified 
 that he felt the redeeming power of laughter as 
 he contemplated the types and circumstances he 
 proposed to make the subject of his ridicule. 
 
 When, after four years absence from his native 
 land, Ibsen studied its domestic politics, he could not 
 retain any very favourable notion of them. The an- 
 tagonism between the two parties must needs appear 
 to him trivial and sentimental. There was not as 
 yet so wide a gulf between the Right and Left as 
 subsequently yawned. Their differences were not 
 so much opposite views of life as dissimilar opinions 
 on some minor political questions, such as always 
 divide the mob ; and though the division might, and 
 
172 THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 
 
 did, become serious, as yet there was no real danger. 
 In the sixties the struggle was not for life or death, 
 as it was later, in the eighties. To the spectator 
 from outside it might well look like a mere contest 
 between those who had the power and those who 
 desired to possess it, and in such a battle there 
 would be nothing to inspire a writer such as Ibsen. 
 To him its course and issue could only be a matter 
 of indifference. Thus he stood in an independent 
 and superior attitude towards the antagonistic 
 parties, and could lash them right and left just as 
 he was minded. Lundestad the country gentle- 
 man, and Bratsberg the chamberlain, fare _as badly 
 as Stensgaard the lawyer and Monsen the landed 
 proprietor. The chamberlain is represented as an 
 aristocrat of the old school who has lost all touch 
 with the times in which he lives, and Lundestad 
 as a man who thinks any means good enough, if 
 only they conduce to his end without bringing him 
 into the clutches of the law. Stensgaard and Mon- 
 sen are fortune-hunters who try to rise, Monsen 
 by swindling, Stensgaard by speechifying. None 
 of them have any interests at heart but their own. 
 
 Stensgaard is a typical figure of the middle of the 
 century. His high-sounding eloquence is the ordi- 
 nary liberal swagger of the average politician of the 
 time. The liberal party had its foothold in national 
 romanticism ; its oratory was a compound of Johann 
 Sverdrup's aphorisms with Bjornson's phrases and 
 figures of speech, and partly too of Grundtvig's 
 
THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 173 
 
 genuine utterances. Bjornson, especially, had many 
 admirers, who imitated his original manner; but 
 what in the model was characteristic and interest- 
 ing, was artificial and absurd in the crowd of common- 
 place copyists. It is such an imitation that Ibsen 
 has depicted in Stensgaard, and their lingo is hit off 
 with unerring certainty. Stensgaard and Peer Gynt 
 have not only egoism but vacillation in common : 
 " I have known him from childhood : vulgarity at 
 home, high aspirations at school. Instinct, character, 
 will, talents — each taking a different road. What 
 can it lead to but a frittered individuality ? " so Dr. 
 Fjeldbo speaks of him. His " high aspirations " at 
 school have developed in him an emotional but very 
 shallow sentimental faculty, and a certain skill in 
 expressing his feelings. The vulgarity at home has 
 stunted his character. 
 
 The father's love of indolence has, in the son, 
 taken the form of a craving for luxury ; his mother's 
 sordid nature and the debasing trade she plied, have 
 also left their mark on him ; the pawnbroker's son 
 has not the smallest notion of honour; he has no 
 self-respect, no sense of honour. He has an open 
 mind, but his insight is undeveloped, and he has no 
 self-knowledge. He is governed by his impulses, 
 and has never learnt to doubt himself. Hence he is 
 utterly incapable of self-condemnation, and always 
 firmly believes that what he feels, says, or does, is 
 indisputable. He is carried away by his own 
 rhetoric ; he is the slave of fine words ; and a blind 
 
174 THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 
 
 confidence in words is the basis of his power. When 
 he dresses up his selfishness in generously-sounding 
 phrases he carries every one with him whose judg- 
 ment is as weak as his own ; and having thus 
 dazzled himself, he does not discern his self-in- 
 terestedness in all its nakedness. Thus he easily is 
 led to be very indignant with the proceedings of 
 another, though he himself may have done the very 
 same thing. (See the passage in which he addresses 
 Bastian, who wishes to marry Fru Rundholm.) He 
 leads others astray because he has first led himself 
 astray. To these characteristics he adds extravagant 
 conceit. He worships himself, and his aim in life 
 is to attain as high a place in the opinion of others 
 as in his own self-esteem. Like all parvenus, he is 
 as vain as he is reckless of others ; he regards 
 nothing but what he calls his goal. 
 
 His eloquence and his ruthlessness, his ambition 
 and his vanity, his absence of all self-criticism, and 
 lack of all sense of honour, combine to make him a 
 very dangerous person, who is likely to produce 
 much confusion before he attains his end. Happily 
 he has two qualities which greatly diminish the 
 danger. He is easily seen through, and he blurts 
 everything out quite heedlessly. The art of dis- 
 simulation needs maturer consideration than he 
 possesses. And besides, he is too confiding ever 
 to imagine that men mean anything but what they 
 say ; he believes in the words of others as entirely 
 as he believes in his own fine phrases. How should 
 
THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. '175 
 
 he see through" the statements of other men when 
 he cannot even see through his own ? We need 
 only think of him in the scene where Lundestad 
 contrives so cleverly to lead him by the nose, and 
 reduce him to such complete self-revelation. 
 
 De Unges Forbund is a comedy of the day, of 
 the very highest rank ; even the subsidiary figures 
 are stamped with a reality which had at that time no 
 parallel in Norwegian literature. In technical quali- 
 ties, too, the play marks an epoch. The colloquial 
 speech, which Ibsen had vainly tried to reproduce 
 in the " Comedy of Love," is here kept up through- 
 out with masterly ease. The parts are not written, 
 but spoken; the language is that of conversation, 
 of gossip; the actors dispute and quarrel exactly 
 as in real life. Even the loose construction of 
 ordinary conversation is here reproduced ; the talk 
 is that of every day. 
 
 That such a work as this should give rise to 
 much misapprehension is a matter of course ; it was 
 the first example of a perfectly new order of litera- 
 ture. And it was such a surprise, so unexpected, 
 that the natural point of sight was missed. It 
 established a new relation with real hfe, much 
 closer than any former work had achieved ; and as 
 it dealt with the representatives of political parties, it 
 was at once supposed that Ibsen had had his eye on 
 particular individuals, and every one set to work to 
 identify the originals of Ibsen's personages. That this 
 process was degrading a noble imaginative work to 
 
176 THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 
 
 the level of a political pamphlet occurred to no one. 
 Even those who did not go so far as this were con- 
 vinced that the play was intended to serve political 
 ends. To ridicule a political Liberal was to them 
 the same thing as to ridicule liberal views in 
 general ; and in the first ebullition of party passion 
 the fact that the piece lashed both factions alike 
 was overlooked. " A one-sided partisanship has 
 found utterance in literature," as a notice in the 
 Aftenblad said, and when once this had been 
 assumed, it was easy enough to come forward as 
 the champion of poetry and belabour the author 
 in her name. In this notice, written as it was by 
 no less a man than Kristian Elster,^ the insult- 
 ing accusation was flung at Ibsen that " He had 
 broken' with his own past, that he had left hold 
 of everything he had formerly clung to, that he had 
 betrayed the ideal, and dimmed the spirit of poetry, 
 while the spirit of provinciahsm and commonplace 
 was raised to the dignity of an ensample." 
 
 Selma's outburst in the third act was, in his 
 opinion, " the only moment in the play when a gust 
 of fresh air blew in, untainted by any pestilential 
 breath of base passion or milk-and-water morality." 
 And even men of greater mark were guilty of a 
 similar misunderstanding. Bjornson's famous verses 
 to Johann Sverdrup were, in the first instance, 
 expressly aimed at "The Young Men's League." 
 
 1 Next to Bjbrnson, Lie, and Kjelland, one of the best novelists of 
 Norway. 
 
THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 177 
 
 On the side of the conservatives, opinion was not 
 more appreciative, only more moderate; the treat- 
 ment of the conservative representatives was favour- 
 able in the piece, but this was overlooked, and the 
 play as a whole was regarded as a demonstration 
 of political opinion. 
 
 A vehement crisis in the agitation concerning the 
 play, brought about by political party-feeUng, broke 
 out when it was produced on the stage of the 
 Christiania theatre. The first modern Norwegian 
 comedy made its appearance on the chief stage in 
 its native land amid a wild chorus of hissing and 
 clapping, of cat-calls and applause. 
 
 The first performance was on the 1 8th of October 
 1 869. Part of the audience gave expression to their 
 approval, while the others protested with loud hisses. 
 On the night of the second performance, the 20th 
 of October, the battle assumed more serious propor- 
 tions. The very first words — Lundestad's speech 
 on the 17th May — were hissed and clapped for some 
 minutes, and the curtain was finally let down. The 
 manager then came forward to ask the audience 
 whether they desired that the piece should be pro- 
 ceeded vnth, in which case he begged for silence. The 
 play went on without interruption as far as Bastian 
 Monsen's speech in the fourth act. " Do you know 
 what the nation means ? The nation means the 
 people, the common people — the people who have 
 nothing, and are nothing — who are bound in servi- 
 tude" — Here the storm burst once more, and was 
 
178 THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 
 
 lulled, only to break out again at the fall of the 
 curtain after the last act. At last, when the gas 
 was turned out, the tumult subsided in the theatre ; 
 but it was carried on in the comdors, and even in 
 the street. At the third representation, when the 
 house was so crammed that even the seats in the 
 orchestra were sold, the uproar was renewed, and it 
 was not till the fourth performance that peace and 
 order were restored. 
 
 Ibsen was for a short time the guest of the Khedive 
 in Egypt, where he was present at the opening of 
 the Suez Canal. It was here that the news reached 
 him of the reception of his play; and how deeply 
 it wounded him to think that it had been dragged 
 into the vortex of poHtical warfare he himself has 
 told us. The frame of mind which the news in- 
 duced subsequently found expression in a little 
 poem, Ved Port Said (At Port Said) : — 
 
 The dawn of the Eastern Land 
 
 Over the haven glittered ; 
 
 Flags from all corners of the earth 
 
 Quivered from the masts. 
 
 Tones of music 
 
 Bore onward the cantata ; 
 
 A thousand cannon 
 
 Christened the Canal. 
 
 The steamers passed 
 
 By the obelisk. 
 
 In the language of my home 
 
 Came to me the whisper of news : 
 
THE ATTACKS ON NORWAY. 179 
 
 The mirror-poem which I had polished 
 
 For masculine minxes 
 
 Was smeared at home 
 
 By splutterings from penny whistles. 
 
 The poison-fly stung ; 
 
 It made my memories loathsome. 
 
 Stars, be thanked ! — 
 
 My home is what is ancient ! 
 
 We hailed the frigate 
 
 From the roof of the river-boat ; 
 
 I waved my hat, 
 
 And greeted the flag. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 REST AND RETROSPECTION. 1870-1877. 
 
 While Ibsen was writing the three plays last dis- 
 cussed, his position as a writer had materially 
 altered. The general recognition for which he had 
 so long waited was now universally accorded him. 
 Brand at once made him famous ; edition after 
 edition was called for, and as he had found in the 
 head of the firm of Gyldendal a publisher who 
 carried on his business on a more extensive scale 
 than his Norwegian competitors would at that time 
 venture on, Ibsen was soon free from any pressing 
 difficulties. Added to this, the Storthing had, in 
 1866, at last allowed him an author's pension, for 
 which he had vainly petitioned the previous Parlia- 
 ment. Not that he achieved it without difficulty 
 even now. This time it was Councillor Riddervold 
 who would not agree to it, saying that as a re- 
 presentative of the Church he could not favour such 
 a bounty to the man who had written " The Comedy 
 of Love," and who had, especially in Pastor Straa- 
 mand, dealt so severely with the clergy of Norway. 
 A Danish biography ^ tells us that hereupon Bjorn- 
 
 1 Dansk Illustreret Tidende, 1867, Nos. 383-4. 
 
REST AND RETROSPECTION. iSi 
 
 son waited on the Councillor to bring him to reason, 
 but without success. Some of Ibsen's old friends 
 then took the matter in hand, and they were more 
 fortunate. The petition was granted, and the pen- 
 sion was voted with only four dissentient voices in 
 the Storthing. 
 
 When Ibsen had quitted Norway he intended to 
 return ; his post as artistic adviser at the Christiania 
 theatre had not been filled up, and awaited him yet. 
 But when once he was out of the country he felt 
 that he could never live there again.^ His pension, 
 and improved payment for his works, enabled him 
 to remain abroad. He merely removed his resi- 
 dence from Rome to Dresden. In the summer of 
 1869 he visited Stockholm; the summer after he 
 went to Copenhagen, and in both capitals he was 
 received with the greatest distinction. Even in 
 Norway a softer wind was blowing for him. Thus, 
 when he went home in the summer of 1874 — after 
 staying for some little time at Vienna, where, in 
 1873, he was chosen to adjudicate the prizes for 
 
 1 It would seem, however, that at a later period he seriously con- 
 sidered the possibility of returning to Norway to stay some time, if not 
 to settle ; Halvorsen mentions this, and it is made certain by a petition 
 addressed to the ecclesiastical authorities of Christiania from Dresden, 
 dated February 24, 1872, in which he says, " I had thought of making 
 my way homeward this year, but a. new poem of some length makes it 
 impossible. [This was Kejser og Galilceer.'\ The agitation of mind 
 which is necessarily involved in a change of residence from town to 
 town, and in settling among surroundings which, after an absence of 
 more than eight years, have in many respects become strange to me, 
 would undoubtedly leave disfiguring marks on an unfinished work 
 which needs to be cast and worked up to a certain point from the 
 same original impulse." — Norske Forfatterleksikon, art. Ibsen. 
 
:82 REST AND RETROSPECTION. 
 
 Norwegian and Danish painting and sculpture — after 
 an absence of ten years, for a visit of some months, 
 he was entertained with numerous marks of respect ; 
 although, as Halvorsen tells us, his stay there was 
 entirely of a private character. When he appeared 
 at the theatre to see a performance of " The Young 
 Men's League," the whole house joined in applaud- 
 ing him. At last he had won the recognition he 
 deserved. On the afternoon of the i8th of Sep- 
 tember the students got up a procession in his 
 honour, and it was on this occasion that, in reply 
 to the addresses and songs of the students, he made 
 the following memorable autobiographical speech to 
 the assembly : — 
 
 " Gentlemen, finding, during my last year's resi- 
 dence abroad, that I felt more clearly as time went 
 on the necessity for seeing my native land once 
 more, I at last determined — with much uneasiness 
 and hesitation, I must frankly own — to set out on 
 my homeward journey. My stay here was to be 
 but a short one, but still, however brief, it might 
 be long enough to destroy the illusion in which I 
 would fain be able to live. 
 
 " I asked myself: ' In what temper will my fellow- 
 countrymen receive me ? ' The honourable recep- 
 tion accorded to my works could not entirely reassure 
 me, for the question in my mind still was this : 
 ' What is my personal position with regard to my 
 fellow-countrymen ? ' Nor can it be denied that 
 misunderstandings had been rife. So far as I under- 
 
REST AND RETROSPECTION. 183 
 
 Stand the matter, two charges had been brought 
 against me. It was thought that I saw my native 
 land through the medium of unquahfied bitterness 
 as to my private and personal concerns, and that I 
 was supposed to have prepared serious attacks on 
 certain features in the hfe of the nation which, in the 
 opinion of many persons, were worthy of better 
 .treatment than being held up to ridicule. 
 
 " I cannot make a better use of so happy and 
 joyful an occasion as this, than by offering an ex- 
 planation and making a confession. 
 
 " I have never made my private concerns of any 
 kind the subject of a literary work. These private 
 facts and feelings seemed to me in earlier and harder 
 times less important than I have since very often 
 been able to understand. When the eider-duck's 
 nest had been plundered once, twice, thrice, it had 
 been robbed of many illusions and great hopes in 
 life. Now what is poetry — poem-writing ? It was 
 not till late in life that my eyes were opened to 
 perceive that to be a poet is in fact to be a seer ; 
 but, note this, so to see that the thing seen is set 
 before the public as the poet saw it. Now only 
 what is part of our experience can be thus seen and 
 assimilated. And this experience is the secret of 
 tjie poetry of the new times. Everything that I 
 have written during the last ten years is part of my 
 intellectual experience. No writer goes through his 
 experience alone. What he has known in life his 
 fellow-countrymen have known too. 
 
1 84 REST AND RETROSPECTION. 
 
 " And what is this that I have lived through and 
 written about ? It is a wide realm. In part I have 
 written of things which have come to me in a flash, 
 in my best hours, as being great and beautiful, and 
 which have stirred me with living power. I have 
 written about that which has seemed to me high 
 above my everyday self, and I have written about it 
 in order to give it substance outside me and within 
 me. But I have also written about the very opposite ; 
 about that which, in my introspective moods, has 
 come to light as the scum or the sediment of my 
 own nature. In such cases writing poetry has 
 served me as a bath, from which I have felt myself 
 emerge cleaner, healthier, and freer. 
 
 "Ay, gentlemen, no one can give a written pre- 
 sentment of anything of which he does not to a 
 certain degree, or at any rate at certain times, bear 
 the image in himself And where among us all is 
 the man who has not, at some time, felt and con- 
 fessed the antagonism of word and deed, of will and 
 duty, of conduct and doctrine ? Or which of us has 
 not, at least once in his Ufe, felt himself egotistically 
 sufficient to himself, and has not, half doubtfully 
 and half in good faith, excused himself for such 
 demeanour, to others and to himself 
 
 " I believe when I say this to you that I am 
 saying it to the right address, for you students 
 have, in its essence, the same task as the poet, 
 that of achieving clearness for yourselves and for 
 others on the temporal and eternal questions which 
 
REST AND RETROSPECTION. 185 
 
 seethe in the times and in the society to which you 
 belong. 
 
 " In this sense I may truly say of myself that, 
 during my absence, I have endeavoured to be a 
 faithful student. A poet is by nature gifted with 
 long sight. I never gazed so fully or so keenly at 
 my home and its stirring life as I have done from 
 a distance and during my exile. 
 
 "And now, my dear young countrymen, a few 
 words in conclusion, which also are connected with 
 past experience. When the Emperor Julian stood at 
 the end of his mortal career, and all around him was 
 crumbling into ruin, nothing so crushed his spirit 
 as the thought that all that was left to him was the 
 respectful memory in which he was held by certain 
 wise and shrewd heads, while his adversary was 
 rich in the regard of warm and loving human hearts. 
 This trait is the outcome of a past experience having 
 its origin in a question which I occasionally aslied 
 myself in my loneliness in a foreign land. And 
 to-day the youth of Norway has gathered round me 
 and given me the answer in word and song, and 
 with such full-hearted warmth as I had never ex- 
 pected to meet. I shall take this answer away with 
 me as the richest gift of my visit to my countrymen 
 at home ; and it is my hope and belief that what I 
 have experienced this evening will, by-and-by, find 
 its reflection in a future work. And if it should be 
 so, if I should some day send such a work here to 
 my home, I beg the students to accept it as a grasp 
 
i86 REST AND RETROSPECTION. 
 
 of the hand and a thank-oiFering for this meeting ; 
 and I beg you to regard yourselves as sharers in 
 the gift." 1 
 
 Under these altered circumstances Ibsen felt 
 himself prompted to give some account of his 
 literary labours up to this time. After dealing blow 
 after blow to his native land, in Brand, Peer Gynt, 
 and the " Young Men's League," there had come a 
 time of rest and retrospect. He took up no new 
 work, but devoted himself to looking over his 
 earHer pieces. Even the one new play which he 
 brought out at this time, Kejser og Galilmer, was 
 only the final development of a plan which had 
 occupied him so long ago as when he first arrived 
 at Rome. The Norwegian editions of his earlier 
 works had by degrees been sold out ; the point 
 to be decided was how much of his youthful poetry 
 he should lay before the larger circle of readers 
 he now could boast of. His stern self-criticism 
 naturally did not play him false on this occasion. 
 Three of his early dramatic pieces and a quantity 
 of juvenile poems were excluded; the "Feasting at 
 Solhaug" was withheld from publication for some 
 years longer, and Catilina and the " Lady of Ostraat " 
 were carefully revised as to details of style. 
 
 The drama, in two parts, Kejser og GalilcEer 
 (Emperor and Galilean), is Ibsen's longest effort ; 
 
 ^ Ibsen had prepared his speech, and Halvorsen printed it from tlie 
 poet's MS. 
 
REST AND RETROSPECTION. 187 
 
 each part separately is as long as any other of his 
 plays. Casar's Frafald (Csesar's Apostasy) is as 
 long as Kongsemnerne, and Kejser Julian (The 
 Emperor Julian) contains as many Mnes as Brand. 
 The original scheme was merely for an ordinary 
 historical play, with Julian as protagonist ; but this 
 plan expanded by degrees, especially after Ibsen 
 had seriously taken it in hand in 1872 (or, as Hal- 
 vorsen tells us, so early as 1871). Fresh materials 
 had accumulated round the old, new points of view 
 and new poetical ideas had grown up in his mind, 
 and so by degrees the whole drama assumed its 
 present vast proportions. It will some day be an 
 interesting task in literary research to separate the 
 various strata of material, and trace the origin of 
 each, and the evolution of the plan. 
 
 " Emperor and Gahlean " holds a remarkable posi- 
 tion in Ibsen's poetical labours. It is his last 
 historical drama, and stands with all its mysticism 
 between two such modem studies of real life as 
 "The Young Men's League" and "The Pillars of 
 Society" {Samfimdets S totter). But it fills a yet 
 more remarkable place in the development of Ibsen's 
 views of life. 
 
 As has already been pointed out, the notion of 
 a " CaU " plays an important part in Ibsen's 
 historical dramas, with some minor exceptions. In 
 Kongsemnerne, for instance, the question of Call or 
 No-call is practically the only question on which 
 the piece turns. In that case the CaU was regarded 
 
i88 REST AND RETROSPECTION. 
 
 as a happy gift from Heaven, falling 6n the elect 
 person exactly as the apple dropped into Aladdin's 
 turban. In Brand the idea of the Call was different ; 
 but it was none the less mystical. It was the 
 Categorical Imperative, as it were, imposed on man, 
 whose duty it is to be " The tablet on which God 
 may write." In Peer Gynt the Call was defined 
 as "to be your Self;" but this definition again was 
 not so free from mysticism as might be supposed. 
 It is possible to be yourself in two senses : — 
 
 You know, that in Paris there has lately been discovered 
 a way of making portraits by help of the sun. Either 
 direct pictures can be given, or else what are called nega- 
 tives. The latter are reversed in light and shadow, and 
 seem ugly to ordinary eyes : but there remains concealed 
 in them also a resemblance, and the only thing requisite is 
 to bring it out. 
 
 It is this last aspect of the case which in 
 " Emperor and Galilean " is set before us in a new 
 light; it here assumes a fatalist character. The 
 Call is neither a gift from Heaven, nor the Cate- 
 gorical Imperative ; it is necessity. It is no longer 
 "Thou shalt," but "Thou must." Will is coerced 
 will. 
 
 Julian's Call is to found an Empire, and the Empire 
 he is to found is that of the Galilean. The will 
 that rules the universe has chosen him, and so far 
 he is under compulsion. But he has the option of 
 founding the kingdom by positive or negative means. 
 Even as a child he had a wonderful gift of winning 
 
REST AND RETROSPECTION. 189 
 
 hearts to the Galilean ; he would address his 
 companions from the grave of martyrs, and convert 
 them to Christianity. But at a later stage he mis- 
 interprets his destiny ; he conceives of the Empire 
 as being that of this world, the dominion of Caesar, 
 not of the Galilean ; and so it falls out that he fights 
 a battle for life or death against the Empire he was 
 to have founded. Nevertheless he must perform 
 his task ; the oppression and persecutions inflicted 
 by him on the Christians are exactly what arouse 
 them from their lethargy and apathy; even those 
 who had been feeble and faint-hearted find courage 
 and enthusiasm to confess Christianity and suffer 
 for the faith. Thus, when Julian dies at the end, 
 he has fulfilled his destiny of establishing Chris- 
 tianity, since he leaves a compact and united body 
 of believers, where, before, indifference and dissen- 
 sion had prevailed. Here, as we see, both mysticism 
 and fatalism are involved in the idea of a Call ; and 
 to this extent Kejser og Galilaer constitutes a 
 final statement ; this fatalism never is found again 
 in Ibsen's work, and the mysticism gives way to a 
 pure naturalistic conception of a Call. It had in 
 fact already disappeared from Ibsen's next previous 
 work, an additional proof that the scheme of this 
 drama belongs to an earlier date. In " The Young 
 Men's League " the mystical aspect of a Call is 
 treated as a hollow form of words. Stensgaard 
 believes as firmly in his call as Haakon does (in 
 " Rivals for the Throne "), and is no less convinced 
 
igo REST AND RETROSPECTION. 
 
 of his personal' alliance with Providence : " And so 
 God be with you," says he. " Yes, God ; for it is 
 his work that we are accomplishing by our youthful 
 trusting deed. So now to the refreshment tent ! 
 We will found our League in this very hour." 
 What had before been sublime is here turned to 
 a ridiculous bombast. 
 
 In Ibsen's process of thought self-sacrifice is 
 intimately bound up with this notion of a Call. 
 Self-sacrifice is demanded of the Elect ; he must 
 make a sacrifice of self-interest, and thus to be your- 
 self is the antithesis of to be sufficient to yourself, 
 that is to say, it is to kill Self. In the abnegation 
 of self-government, in the devotion of brotherly love, 
 lies the highest task of humanity ; indeed, Ibsen goes 
 so far beyond this stage of evolution, that he glori- 
 fies the sacrifice for its own sake. This is very 
 conspicuous even in Brand, and is seen again in the 
 glorification of the Martyrs' passion, in " Emperor 
 and Galilean.'' From the modern point of moral 
 purview the Martyr is only admirable when he 
 sacrifices himself for the good of others; but in 
 Ibsen's eyes, on the contrary, the purifying and 
 sublimating power of the sacrifice is so great that 
 it is precious in itself. When the Christians in 
 Kefser Julian gash their own flesh and tear open 
 the wounds with their own hands to fling pieces at 
 the Emperor's feet, it is not to him an evidence of 
 the pitch of madness to which fanaticism can carry 
 a man; it shows the measure of the depth and 
 
REST AND RETROSPECTION. 191 
 
 Strength of enthusiasm to which faith can rise. It 
 proves that this faith, at this moment in history, had 
 life and right on its side. That such a view of hfe 
 as that for which JuUan is fighting is but a survival, 
 is amply proved by the fact that it cannot produce 
 a single martyr ; for a cause for which no one will 
 sacrifice his all is historically doomed to death. 
 Thus, in this respect also Kejser og Galilcser stands 
 on the sublimest heights to which Ibsen's idealism 
 has ever mounted. In his later works his views are 
 moderate and practical enough, even when sacrifice 
 is under discussion. 
 
 In point of style " Emperor and Galilean " does 
 not take such high rank among Ibsen's works. As 
 we read it we get an impression that the long time 
 which elapsed between the inception of the work 
 arid its ultimate execution resulted in a want of 
 homogeneous unity in the moulding of the vast 
 materials. Thus we forthwith discover that Julian 
 in C(Zsar's Frafald (Caesar's Apostasy) is a far 
 more significant and interesting figure than he is in 
 Kejser Julian (The Emperor Julian). It must be 
 admitted indeed that all the characteristics he dis- 
 plays as Emperor are indicated in his childhood and 
 youth ; but what surprises us is that his weak side 
 should so suddenly predominate as soon as he is dn 
 the throne. In " Caesar's Apostasy " Julian entirely 
 commands the reader's sympathy. His is from the 
 first a genuine nature, honestly seeking the truth, 
 and striving for full and complete life ; but instead 
 
192 REST AND RETROSPECTION. 
 
 of life, books are set before him, and instead of the 
 truth, fine words. He is just a little vain too, and 
 has an early-developed gift of dissimulation ; but 
 we are ready to forgive him these defects in con- 
 sideration of his difficult position ; even when he 
 contrives by crafty means to be hailed as Emperor, 
 he does not lose much of our good-will, for he only 
 does it in necessary self-defence. As general of 
 the forces in Gaul he has displayed admirable skill, 
 energy, and valour in action ; and when at last he 
 tears himself from the GaHleans it is simply because 
 he is weary of the hypocrisy, bad faith, and mean- 
 ness, which he finds among the Christians. 
 
 But in the second part, as Emperor, Julian is 
 suddenly transformed ; he who had longed for an 
 active life now gives himself up to repose and to 
 books ; from a man of action he has become a vain 
 literary pedant, seeing only the outward form and 
 never reaching the inmost kernel; and when the 
 citizens of Antioch laugh him to scorn they are in the 
 right. He has lost the stamp of tragedy, and falls 
 below his earlier standard never to rise to it again 
 till quite the close. He ends like Catiline, Fru Inger, 
 and Hjordis, being driven mad by his woeful fate, 
 and then to death. 
 
 As the representative of the highest culture of his 
 time, we would gladly think of Julian as a nobler 
 figure than Ibsen has shown us ; and this is true 
 in an even greater degree of the rest of the figures in 
 the piece, who have had that old typical training. It 
 
REST AND RETROSPECTION. 193 
 
 may be that this culture was no more than a sur- 
 vival, doomed to crumble into dust; nevertheless, 
 even in its decadence it had still power enough to 
 produce nobler and grander individuality than that 
 of Libanios and his peers. But here, as wherever 
 else Ibsen has treated the historical struggle be- 
 tween the old and the new order, he is entirely 
 on the side of the new. He takes up the same 
 attitude in " Rivals for the Throne," and in the poem 
 on the thousandth anniversary of Norway's freedom, 
 where he glorifies Harald Haarfager's deed at the 
 cost of the older freedom-loving magnates of the 
 land. 
 
 In regard to actual writing, Kejser og Galilceer 
 is an interesting attempt to bring the character of 
 a period to bear even on the details of style. The 
 author has tried to reproduce the involved manner 
 of the later Classic Ages, with all its digressions 
 and flowers of speech. The Latin, rather than the 
 Greek construction, seems to have been his model. 
 It is a style which lends great force to the his- 
 torical colour of the piece. 
 
 That Ibsen's sense of style had developed itself 
 in the course of years, and that his ideal had 
 become modified, need not be said. We can, in 
 fact, mark three distinct stages of its growth. In 
 his younger poertis, feeling is the stamp of his style. 
 Then came a period, beginning with the writing 
 of Haermcendene, during which his chief endeavour 
 was to give it a strictly national character. A small 
 
194 REST AND RETROSPECTION. 
 
 but significant anecdote is told of him at this time. 
 It happened that a sort of charity-bazaar was to be 
 held in Christiania, at which tableaux-vivants were 
 to be shown, and appropriate words spoken. Ibsen 
 was requested to write the text for one of them. 
 But when the performance was at hand Vilhelm 
 Wiehe, who had been entrusted with its delivery, 
 declared that he could not possibly speak it. The 
 style and language were too decidedly Norwegian for 
 a Danish actor to venture to pronounce the words 
 in the presence of a Norwegian audience. Even 
 Fru Gundersen, then Froken Svendsen, declared 
 that she should find some difficulty in delivering 
 the poem. Although she had studied at Chris- 
 tiania, on the Norwegian stage, and her accent 
 had been caught from the people among whom 
 she lived, Ibsen's Norwegian struck her as too 
 peculiar. 
 
 In his third and last stage of development Ibsen's 
 law of style was perspicuity, and this he constantly 
 kept in view when, soon after 1870, he undertook 
 to revise the works of his youth. He found his 
 emotional early style in part too free and in part too 
 general. Consequently the work of revision con- 
 sisted, to some extent, in giving vigour to the style, 
 by greater brevity and compactness ; partly in re- 
 placing the original phrases — too vague in some 
 passages — by others more graphic. 
 
 When Catilina was republished, five-and-twenty 
 years after its first appearance, as a sort of jubilee 
 
REST AND RETROSPECTION. 195 
 
 edition, there were very few lines which had not 
 undergone some alteration. As examples are better 
 than description, we here reproduce a few of the 
 passages already quoted from the second edition in 
 their original form. The passage in which Catilina 
 says that he aims at establishing civic freedom 
 {anie, p. 31) originally stood thus : — 
 
 See freedom, freedom, will I recreate 
 
 As pure as once in time long past it flourished 
 
 Here and amongst us ; will recall the time 
 
 When every Roman gladly sold his life 
 
 To buy the honour of his fatherland, 
 
 And gave up all that he might guard its glory. 
 
 Catilina's words, in which he wishes that, like a 
 star, " he might blaze as he fell " (see ante, p. 34), 
 stood thus in the first edition : — 
 
 Nay ! for a moment to shine out in splendour. 
 And flame a blazing meteor through the sky — 
 To consecrate my name by one high deed 
 With great renown, with immortality, 
 Ah ! I could lightly in the self-same hour 
 Quit life — for then I should have lived indeed ; 
 I could fly hence and win an allien shore, 
 Nay, I could plunge the dagger in my heart. 
 
 And Furia's declamatory speech (see anU, p. 37) 
 was as follows : — 
 
 And all this purposeless and empty action, 
 
 A life as faint as any lamp's last flicker, 
 
 Ah ! what a field to exercise this fulness 
 
 Of high, proud hopes that, mounting in my bosom, 
 
196 REST AND RETROSPECTION. 
 
 Are crushed together in between these walls, 
 
 Where life grows stiff as death, and hope's extinguished, 
 
 And where no object leads the brain's thought onward. 
 
 As may be seen, not only the construction but 
 the style itself is firmer. 
 
 Fru Inger til Ostraat, of which the second edition 
 had appeared the year before, offers yet more re- 
 markable instances of the difference between the 
 style of Ibsen's youthful work and that of his 
 mature manhood. 
 
 The portions which have undergone least altera- 
 tion are Kline's famous scene with Nils Lykke, 
 and Fru Inger's monologue in the fifth act. The 
 part which has most variations is that of Nils 
 Lykke. Especially is the long soliloquy in which 
 he presents himself to the audience, in the second 
 act, shortened to about half in the second edition ; 
 and not the part only, but the drama, is greatly 
 improved in consequence. 
 
 Yet more ruthless is the way in which Ibsen has 
 remodelled his lyric work. When we see the solitary 
 small volume of " Poems " which he published in 
 1870, we are disposed to imagine that his efforts in 
 lyric verse must have been but meagre. And yet 
 in his younger days he wrote and published in 
 periodical form such a large number of poems that, 
 if they were all collected, several volumes might be 
 compiled, each as large as this which he himself 
 edited. As early as 1850 or 185 1 he began to 
 think of publishing a collection of his verses, and 
 
REST AND RETROSPECTION. 197 
 
 the project proceeded so far that the first sheet 
 was printed off; but then he changed his mind, 
 and the editing was postponed year after year. It 
 was not till thirty years later that he took the task 
 up in earnest, and he then set to work in so stern 
 a mood that, of all his lyric writings, only fifty-five 
 were esteemed worthy to be included. Of the 
 long poem originally published in " Manden" En 
 Lordagaften i Hardanger (A Saturday Evening 
 in Hardanger), only the fragment which now 
 heads the collection under the title Spillemcend 
 (Musicians) was retained, and even this was re- 
 duced from nine to four stanzas. The cycle of 
 pieces before mentioned, / Billedgalleriet (In the 
 Picture Gallery), consisting of twenty-three poems, 
 was concentrated in the little poem I Galleriet (In 
 the Gallery) ; and of the separate songs only one 
 was retained, Lysrad (Fearing Light), while a few 
 leading ideas were utilised for new poems.^ In Paa 
 Akershus four verses were struck out and six new 
 ones written ; Byggeplaner (Plans for Building) has 
 but three stanzas instead of four ; Edderfuglen 
 (The Eider-Duck) seven instead of sixteen, and so 
 forth. 
 
 And when we regard the details of the changes 
 made, our sense of the severity of his self-criticism 
 and the difference between his two styles is en- 
 hanced. Take, for instance, the first stanza of the 
 
 1 Min unge Vin (My Young Wine) ; En Svane (A Swan); Stam- 
 bogsrim (Lines for an Album). 
 
198 REST AND RETROSPECTION. 
 
 poem Paa Akershus (At Akershus). The original 
 form was as follows : — 
 
 Sommernatten har sit inilde 
 Slor henover jorden straskket, 
 Taagedunkle stjerner spille 
 Mat og solverblegt bag daskket. 
 
 These " mist-darkened stars " which play " dim 
 and silver-pale behind the veil," did not satisfy Ibsen 
 when he read the poem again ; they do not accurately 
 represent the mist and the individual stars which 
 shine through it on a summer night ; and after mak- 
 ing a slight alteration in the first lines he entirely 
 re-wrote the two last, so that the verse now stands 
 
 thus : — 
 
 Sommernattens slor med milde 
 Folder sig om jorden spsnder; 
 Enkle stjerner, store, stille, 
 Blege bagom skodden brsender. 
 
 In this form the verse gives such a vivid picture 
 of a summer night that the reader has it before his 
 eyes. And as Ibsen did in this case, so he did all 
 through. He replaced every word which was charac- 
 teristic of the older poetical style, and which he 
 therefore thought rather worn out, by new expres- 
 sions of more picturesque effect, because they are 
 more true to nature. Thus for bdlgen (the waves, 
 or waters) he wrote fjorden (the fjord) ; for klippen 
 (cliff or rock), bergvmggen (the wedge of the moun- 
 tain) ; for " find a way," " force a way ; " for 
 " bright gold ; " " red gold," and so forth. 
 
REST AND RETROSPECTION. 199 
 
 As a rule, these changes were merely verbal ; but 
 in some cases the alterations were of a more radical 
 character. In " The Eider-Duck," for instance, the 
 revision is highly characteristic. In the first instance 
 the Eider-Duck had been to Ibsen no more than a 
 symbol of patience and fidelity. Man is not so 
 enduring and faithful, for — 
 
 If it loses but once its secret treasure, 
 Its soul is plunged into gloom beyond measure ; 
 Its powers grow sickly, its spirit depressed, 
 Till nothing is left but a bleeding breast. 
 
 All this disappears in the new version, and the 
 Eider-Duck becomes to Ibsen the image of his own 
 experience : — 
 
 But losing its third and its last delight, 
 It stretches its wing through a long spring night. 
 It cleaves the mist with a bleeding breast ; 
 To the south ! to a coast by sunshine blest ! 
 
 Not less characteristic is the alteration Byggeplaner 
 (Plans for Building) has undergone. Of the greater 
 and the lesser intention — to be an immortal poet 
 and to win the love of a woman — this is the original 
 conclusion : — 
 
 I thought a splendid harmony inspired the whole design, 
 But discord in the drawing came, and line fell out with 
 
 line; 
 And just as I grew sensible, the whole grew crazy mad ; 
 The great became so little, and the little — all I had. 
 
200 REST AND RETROSPECTION. 
 
 In the alteration the last two lines ran thus : — 
 
 When the architect grew sensible, the mansion it grew mad, 
 The main wing grew too puny, and the small wing fell 
 down flat. 
 
 Such changes as were made in several other poems 
 bear witness to all the experience which had given 
 Ibsen his gloomy views of life, and made his mood 
 more bitter as the years went on. Poems like 
 Mindets Magt (The Power of Memory) and Troens 
 Grund (The Basis of Faith), written in the early 
 years of his life abroad, give it a loftier and more 
 energetic utterance. The first, indeed, is a poetical 
 testimony to his determination in Rome never to 
 return to Norway. 
 
 Nevertheless, as time went on, he began to feel 
 the necessity for seeing home once more. The first 
 edition of his poems ended with these words : — 
 
 Towards the huts of the snow-land, 
 From the woods of the south coast, 
 There rideth a horseman 
 Every single night. 
 
 And when in the following year he sent his great 
 poem for the thousandth anniversary of the unity 
 of Norway ( Ved Ttisindaarsfesten) to Christiania, 
 he began it with these conciliatory sentiments : — 
 
 My countrymen, who filled for me deep bowls 
 
 Of wholesome bitter medicine, such as gave 
 
 The poet, on the m:irgin of his grave, 
 
 Fresh strength to fight where broken twilight rolls, — 
 
REST AND RETROSPECTION. 201 
 
 My countrymen, who sped me o'er the wave,- — 
 An exile, with my griefs for pilgrim-soles, 
 My fears for burdens, doubts for staff, to roam, — 
 From the wide world I send you greeting home. 
 
 I send you thanks for gifts that help and harden, 
 Thanks for each hour of purifying pain ; 
 Each plant that prospers in my poet's garden 
 Is rooted where your harshness poured its rain ; 
 Each shoot in which it blooms and burgeons forth, 
 It owes to that grey weather from the north ; 
 The sun's fire loosens, but the fog secures ! 
 My country, thanks ! My life's best gifts were yours. 
 
 Nevertheless, there was much uneasiness and 
 indecision to be overcome before he could make up 
 his mind to visit Norway once more after ten years 
 of absence. This he confessed in his address to 
 the students. The favourable reception accorded to 
 his books could not altogether relieve his mind, for 
 there was still the question, " What is my personal 
 position in the estimation of my fellow-country- 
 men ? " The answer was given by the reception 
 he met with, above all from the academic youth 
 of Norway. 
 
 It was not alone anxiety as to this question which 
 drew him homewards ; it was yet more the feeling 
 that he was standing at a turning-point in his poetic 
 career. The stride he had made in writing De 
 Unges Forbimd was but the first step on a new 
 path. The period of historical and argumentative 
 drama was ended ; the drama of daily life was 
 pressing on his attention. And to be able to give 
 
202 REST AND RETROSPECTION. 
 
 living pictures of the present, Ibsen felt the need 
 for standing once more on Norwegian soil and 
 breathing Norwegian air. His attitude towards 
 reality was of such a nature that he required no 
 long stay in his native land ; a short visit was suffi- 
 cient; then he went back to reside abroad again, 
 and, while keeping an observant eye on home affairs, 
 through the medium of books and papers, he began 
 that series of modern plays which have been the 
 outcome of his poetic efforts during the last ten 
 years, and have won for him European celebrity. 
 
 These dramas are too recent to be made the 
 subject of literary history ; and a general critical 
 opinion would be foreign to the purpose of this book. 
 We must therefore be content to work out one part 
 only of the problem they present, namely, to throw 
 what light we can on the underlying motives of 
 these pieces, and on their artistic character. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 DRAMAS OF THE DAY (1877-1888). 
 
 The great historical events which marked the years 
 between 1 868-1 871 had excited Ibsen's interest in 
 the highest degree. During the Danish-German 
 war he had discerned in the transactions of European 
 pontics that discrepancy between word and deed 
 which he had gradually learnt to watch for with an 
 eagerness that amounted to a passion. He cried 
 out to the rulers of Europe : — 
 
 With vows forgotten, and pledges broken, 
 
 With pages of treaties too torn to read. 
 With denials this year of what last year was spoken, 
 
 In the furrows of history you've sown seed. 
 
 He formed the impression that the times were rotten 
 in which he lived, that a new epoch must surely be 
 at hand ; and he took this occasion to institute a 
 comparison with former great moral revolutions in 
 Europe, and with the decline of the Roman Empire 
 and the new developments which ensued, when every- 
 thing was crashing to its fall, and the ruins of 
 
 Circus and palace. 
 
 Temples, a forest of columns, 
 
 Arches, arcades, all trampled to dust 
 203 
 
204 DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 
 
 Under the shod hoof of the buffalo. 
 
 Then was built anew on the foundation of the old, 
 
 Ami the air was pure for a time. 
 
 Now the auguries point to the hour of renovation ; 
 
 Now rises the pestilence from the spongy soil, 
 
 And puffs now hither, now thither. 
 
 (^Airaham Lincoln's Murder}) 
 
 Or again he sought a parallel in the decay of 
 ancient Egypt. In both cases the cause lay in the 
 absence of individuality ; for, as he writes in 
 Ballonhrevet (The Letter by Balloon) : — 
 
 Where the form is not imbued 
 With the personal to the core, 
 With hate, frenzy, joy in battle,' 
 Beat of pulse and swing of blood, ' 
 All the pomp of life's no more 
 Than a skeleton's dry rattle. ^ 
 
 Ibsen seems to have regarded the Franco-German 
 war as an epoch-marking crisis which must result 
 in a new phase of the ages. In Ballonhrevet, writ- 
 ten in December 1870, he inquires, with express 
 reference to the condition of the times : — 
 
 Lady ! shall we be invited ? 
 
 Wait ! who knows ? The post may bring 
 
 A card for us too. That's his ring ? 
 
 And in a letter to Georg Brandes, written in the 
 same month, he gives even more emphatic utterance 
 to these hopes in plain prose : — 
 
 " Public events absorb a great part of my thoughts. 
 
DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 205 
 
 The old, illusory France is broken into fragments. 
 If now this new' and very real Prussia might also be 
 broken up, at one leap we should find ourselves in 
 an entirely new epoch. Hey ! what a row the ideas 
 all about us would make. And high time too ! Ah ! 
 what we live on now-a-days is no more than the 
 crumbs fa.llen from the table of the revolution of the 
 last century, and we have chewed those morsels 
 long enough. Those notions demand fresh material 
 and fresh elucidation. Liberty, equality and frater- 
 nity have no longer the same meaning as in the 
 days of the late-lamented Guillotine. But this is 
 what politicians will not see, and for that I hate 
 them. Men want only partial revolutions, revolu- 
 tions in externals, in politics. But this is mere 
 trifling. What we really need is a revolution in the 
 spirit of man." 
 
 What Ibsen looked for from the new epoch was 
 a state of society in which the individual might 
 develop wholly and freely, without being fettered 
 by society or the State. In another letter to 
 Georg Brandes, written a few months later, he 
 says : — 
 
 " The State is the curse of the individual. What 
 has been the price of Prussia's strength as a State ? 
 The absorption of the individual in the political and 
 geographical entity. The waiter is the best soldier. 
 Away with the State! When that revolution is 
 accomplished I will be there : Undermine the notion 
 of the State, let free will and spiritual affinity be 
 
2o6 DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 
 
 the only recognised basis of union, and you will have 
 the beginnings of a liberty worthy of the name." 
 
 This notion : that the State is the foe of the in- 
 dividual, and must therefore be done away with, 
 is a favourite idea with Ibsen. Sixteen years 
 later I heard him expatiate on it with as much 
 fervour and zeal as when he first put it forward; 
 and it is, in fact, one of the pregnant thoughts of 
 our day, destined, yet, perhaps, to play a great 
 part in the future. Even so ardent a supporter of 
 the State as a theory, as Herbert Spencer, admits 
 in one of his essays that we are approaching a 
 constitution of society in which government will 
 be restricted within the narrowest possible limits, 
 and freedom raised to the highest possible power. 
 In point of fact, they were closely allied notions 
 which, soon after this, were proclaimed by the 
 Paris Commune. In a later letter to Brandes Ibsen 
 bewails : — 
 
 " Is it not base of the Commune in Paris to 
 give in, and spoil my admirable theory of the 
 State — or rather of the No State ? The idea is 
 now nipped and crushed for a long time to come, 
 and I can no longer even revive the subject in verse 
 with any decency. Still, it has a sound kernel in 
 it, that I plainly see, and it will yet be realised 
 some day without any distortion." 
 
 The Paris Commune and the inevitable reaction 
 were a disappointment to Ibsen. Like Maximos, 
 in " Emperor and Gahlean," he believed that the 
 
DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 207 
 
 "Third Empire" was at hand; and, Hke him, he 
 had discovered his mistake : the time was not ripe. 
 There can be no doubt that such poHtical convic- 
 tions as these led him to conceive of this singular 
 figure of a Mystic. 
 
 As long as Ibsen believed that the new order of 
 things was so near, he had preserved a dignified and 
 expectant attitude : — 
 
 Until i/ten I shut myself into my room, 
 Pace about there with kid gloves on ; 
 Until iAen I fence myself around, 
 Delicately inscribe my verses upon vellum. 
 
 But as soon as he saw that the " Steamship Europe " 
 on her voyage to new lands carried on board the 
 corpse of the past as ballast, and that she would 
 continue to do so, being still so far from the haven 
 of her voyage — as soon as he saw this, he forsook 
 this expectant attitude and began a diagnosis of the 
 diseases of modern society. The outcome of this 
 study is known to us in the series of society 
 dramas, beginning with "The Pillars of Society" 
 (Samfundets St'dtter), and closing — provisionally — 
 with "The Lady of the Sea" {Fruenfra Havet). 
 
 The Russian writer and anarchist, Prince Krapot- 
 kine, not long since, in an essay in the Nineteenth 
 Century, characterised the -hypocrisy of modern 
 society in these terms : — " Our moral maxims say, 
 ' Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself ; ' but 
 if a child should act upon this, and take off his 
 
2oS DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 
 
 jacket to give to a poor unknown child, his mother 
 would tell him that the saying was not to be thus 
 interpreted ; that if he were to live by this rule he 
 would soon go barefoot, and without having relieved 
 the misery about him. This injunction is good to 
 repeat, but not to practise. Our preachers say, ' To 
 work is to pray ; ' but every one does his best to 
 make others work for him. We are told we are 
 not to lie ; but politics are one huge lie. And we 
 accustom ourselves and our children to live by this 
 double-faced morality, which is sheer hypocrisy, and 
 to defend the hypocrisy by sophistry. Hypocrisy 
 and sophistry lie at the foundation of our life. But 
 society cannot subsist on such morality. Things 
 cannot continue like this ; there must, there will, 
 be a change." 
 
 It is a perfectly similar notion of modern society 
 which lies at the foundation of Ibsen's recent plays, 
 and it is this very social hypocrisy that he deals 
 with. Not blunderers like Peer Gynt, nor fortune- 
 hunters like Stensgaard, are now his theme ; on the 
 contrary, bright examples of men in society. He 
 makes them so very superior, and fits them out 
 with so many privileges, that they pass in the 
 opinion of the world as really being men of honour ; 
 and then, bit by bit, he strips them of their society 
 finery till their native self-seeking is left in all its 
 nakedness. ' 
 
 Consul Bernick leads the way. He is the most 
 important and most respected man in the town, a 
 
DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 209 
 
 merchant on a grand scale, a man who is always 
 foremost in any undertaking of general utiUty ; the 
 great benefactor of his native place — one of the 
 true pillars of its society. And yet self-interest and 
 greed he behind everything he does. When he 
 makes gifts to the town, he does it to gain power 
 and influence ; and when he undertakes the affairs of 
 the railway, it is because it will be an advantage to 
 him if the Hne is made. But he dares not frankly 
 and honestly confess his motives, out of considera- 
 tion for his neighbours. Society insists on high- 
 sounding words, so he and all the other persons 
 in the piece use big words to lend a grace to their 
 small dealings. But there is also a special type 
 of social hypocrisy in Norway which Ibsen has here 
 attacked, and which, at the time when /this play 
 was written, had just reached its height. 
 
 Historical events in Europe had not in fact made the 
 same impression on Norwegian society as on Ibsen. 
 The feeling there was almost terror. People read in 
 the Norwegian papers of the horrors of the Paris Com- 
 mune, with dark hints as to a secret society calling 
 itself "International," whose aim it was to consign all 
 modern culture to the flames. And at the same time 
 they read of all the extravagant " tendencies " which 
 were diffusing themselves throughout the Continent, 
 and were told that some of the worst were already 
 knocking at their own door. But here, happily, they 
 could find no congenial soil ; here peace reigned and 
 there could be no danger, for our little Norwegian 
 
210 DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 
 
 society, God be praised, rested on a firmer moral 
 foundation than the greater society over there. 
 This great society was regarded in general as rotten 
 to the very ground; Norwegian society, on the 
 other hand, was still healthy, and its health must 
 be preserved by exclusive measures, and by estab- 
 lishing a sort of moral cordon against the infection 
 of the plague of modern ideas. Our special moral 
 superiority at that time was one of the peculiarly 
 Norwegian articles of faith, such as always prevail 
 in a small country which has for a long period closed 
 its ports against ihe introduction of the movement 
 towards the higher culture of greater lands. 
 
 This is precisely the form of social hypocrisy 
 at which Ibsen deals a home-thrust in " The Pillars 
 of Society." He is of opinion that the main 
 difference between a great and a small polity is 
 that there is more lying and concealment in the small 
 than in the large one. The smaller the community, 
 the more considerations fetter the individual members, 
 and the more impediments there are in the way 
 of personal action; and at the same time the less 
 important are their proceedings generally, while 
 the same sins and crimes are rife, under the shelter 
 of social morality. Bernick, who in the first 
 moment is so indignant with the American ship- 
 owners for sending out a ship that is not seaworthy, 
 is at last driven, out of consideration for his position 
 in society, to be guilty of the same crime. 
 
 When the piece came out the particular phase of 
 
DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 211 
 
 hypocrisy which the poet was assailing of course 
 had an answer ready at once. The critics declared 
 that the picture drawn by Ibsen had no resemblance 
 to the truth ; that he knew nothing of Norwegian 
 manners ; that Norwegian society was not hke the 
 notion of it invented by Ibsen far away at Munich ; 
 that it was far more honourable and better than that 
 of the great world. But in the ten years which 
 have elapsed since these events, facts have proved 
 so entirely in favour of the poet and against the 
 critics that this form of hypocrisy no longer dares 
 to show itself. 
 
 In " The Pillars of Society " we are shown what 
 men are from a social stand-point; but in Consul 
 Bemick's conduct to his wife we have an anti- 
 cipatory hint for a study of the man of society as 
 a husband.. This study was worked out into 
 Et Dukkehjem (A Doll's House). Here again Ibsen 
 makes every concession to the man whose selfishness 
 he proposes to unveil. Helmer, the lawyer, is a 
 man who may be regarded as an honour to society. 
 In his outward conduct he is a model of virtue, 
 and a man of aesthetic instincts with highly culti- 
 vated tastes. He has the most vehement aversion 
 for everything approaching to untruth or dishonour, 
 and his notions of honesty in money-matters are 
 so strict that he will not accept a loan, simply 
 because he might conceivably die the next day 
 and so be prevented from repaying the debt. So 
 far the writer makes him out as better than most 
 
212 DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 
 
 Other men. But what a coarse vein of self-love 
 lies under this fair exterioc How rough and 
 selfish he is to his wife, not only when the fearful 
 discovery of her deceit bursts upon him, but even 
 before, in their daily life together. She is to live 
 only for him, think only of him, feel and believe 
 only what he feels and believes. 
 
 No other of Ibsen's dramas has called forth such 
 endless, tedious discussions as " A Doll's House ; " 
 it positively gave rise to a complete literature of 
 argument for and against it — not in Norway only, but 
 in Denmark and Sweden ; nay, in Sweden it has 
 given rise to a school of dramatic writing which treats 
 similar subjects in Ibsen's manner — some indeed after 
 a fashion which has a distinct touch of caricature. 
 
 The thing which gave " A Doll's House " this 
 pre-eminence over Ibsen's other works is the cir- 
 cumstance that in it the author, for the first time, 
 put forward his demand for individual develop- 
 ment on behalf of woman. Women, too, ought 
 to be themselves independent human beings ; not 
 merely the wives of their husbands and the mothers 
 of their children. 
 
 " Before all else you are a wife and a mother," 
 says Helmer. 
 
 " That I no longer believe," replies Nora. " I 
 think that before all else I am a human being, I, as 
 much as you. At least I will try to become one." 
 
 Till now Ibsen had left women out of count in 
 this respect ; he had depicted individual, headstrong 
 
DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 213 
 
 exceptions, but, on the whole he had shown woman 
 only as enthusiastic for the achievements of man ; 
 her great and admirable peculiarity was that she 
 was ready to sacrifice everything for the man she 
 loved. This was what he had shown us in Aurelia 
 (in Catilind), in Eline (in Fru Inger), in Margretha, 
 Ragnhild,and Ingebjorg (in Kongsemnerne), in Agnes, 
 Brand's wife ; in Solvejg {Peer Gyni), in Mrs. Bernick, 
 Miss Bernick, and Lona Hessel {Pillars of Society). 
 Nay, even Hjordis would have been such a woman if 
 Sigurd had been her husband instead of Gunnar. And 
 where it is not to their husbands that they sacrifice 
 themselves, it is to their sons. What is it that twines 
 the red thread with Dame Inger's life, but her son ? 
 What makes Aase attractive in spite of everything, 
 but her love for her son ? And what is Inga fra 
 Varteig, in Kongsemnerne, but simply the mother 
 of " the King — her great son." Love is the essence 
 of woman ; love which will sacrifice all without 
 looking for a return. Thus, in the early editions 
 of Kongsemnerne a truly Ibsen-like phrase says : 
 " To love, to sacrifice everything and be forgotten — 
 that is woman's saga," and for this reason Ibsen 
 always sets women in radiant poetic contrast to the 
 egoism of men ; everything lyric, all the repressed 
 emotional feeling, of which he can make no use in 
 his presentment of men, he lavishes on a glory to 
 set round the heads of his women. His descriptions 
 of these women constitute the tenderest and most 
 melting passages of his poetry. Nothing can be 
 
214 DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 
 
 more sweet and touching than EHne's love, or Mar- 
 gretha's; nothing deeper or more fervent than the 
 scene in the fourth act of Brand, where Agnes gives 
 herself up to thinking of her little dead son. Thus 
 Ibsen is above all other things the chivalrous poet of 
 women ; and even if he does not wholly agree with 
 Bernick, he gives him his approval when he makes 
 him exclaim, " You women are the pillars of society." 
 "'' But the whole drift of his principles could not 
 fail to lead him to apply the same standard to 
 women as to men, and then their capacity for 
 losing themselves in others could no longer be to 
 him their highest function. 
 
 It has been pointed out that the germ of "A 
 Doll's House" is to be found in Selma's outburst 
 in the fourth act of " The Young Men's League ; " 
 and this i% perfectly true ; but the first germ of all 
 is in fact older still. In one of the scenes where 
 Peer Gynt is making love to Anitra he says : — 
 
 I will rivet thy desires, 
 Captivate thy wandering fires ; 
 Thou shalt breathe for me alone ; 
 I am what my girl admires, 
 Gold and jewels, all her own. 
 Life is blank if we are parted, — 
 Blank to thee, that is, remember ! 
 In this contract we have started, 
 To thy being's lowest ember, 
 Every inch and thread of thee 
 I must know is filled with me. 
 
DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 215 
 
 Therefore it is well that just 
 
 Empty is thy skull's formation ; 
 
 If one has a soul, one must 
 
 Spare some time to contemplation ; 
 
 While these hours in thought I measure, 
 
 If thou wilt, then shalt, my treasure, 
 
 Wear an anklet round thy ankle. 
 
 'Twill be best for both, I trow ; 
 
 I will deal with thoughts that rankle, 
 
 Thou'lt preserve — the status quo. 
 
 These lines contain the direct prototype of the 
 portrait of Helmer; but indirectly, as preparatory 
 to the satire on Helmer, they also point to the 
 views which led Ibsen, in " A Doll's House," to 
 work out the claims of women to individuality. 
 StiU, in accordance with Ibsen's whole conception 
 of women, this claim, as addressed to men, does not 
 take the form of a bitter accusation on the score of 
 neglected duties, but that of an affectionate appeal. 
 
 At first Nora is a thorough woman on Ibsen's 
 earher pattern. She does not ask to be anything 
 for her own sake, but hke her predecessors in Ibsen's 
 dramas, has an unlimited instinct of self-sacrifice. 
 She has no intention of committing forgery; she 
 aims only at sparing her invalid father and saving 
 her husband's life, so she is finally convinced that 
 her deed is praiseworthy. When she learns that 
 it is, regarded as a crime she cannot believe it; and 
 even when she is convinced, she would do it again 
 gladly if circumstances should again make it desir- 
 able. When Helmer says : " No man sacrifices 
 
!i6 DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 
 
 iiis honour, even for one he loves," she speaks in 
 the name of all Ibsen's women, and stands forth as 
 the representative of his idea of a woman, when 
 she exclaims : " Hundreds of thousands of women 
 have done so." 
 
 When, in the preface to the first part of Giftas 
 (Married), the Swedish novelist August Strindberg 
 takes the field against this answer, and speaks of it 
 as a sort of chivalrous fencing parry, his argument 
 rests on a defective apprehension of one of the most 
 characteristic features of Ibsen's dramas. 
 
 But such unlimited devotion involves great peril 
 for the individuality of the devotee, especially in 
 the case of marriage with a man like Helmer. In 
 3uch an union Nora cannot live the life of a human 
 being, but only that of a doll ; Helmer's ideal of a 
 wife is very like Peer Gynt's ideal of a mistress ; for 
 while Peer Gynt desires to take the place in Anitra 
 of her own soul, Helmer desires to be Nora's will 
 and conscience. She lives in a condition . of legal 
 infancy; she thinks like a child, and allows herself 
 to be treated as a child ; so long as she is full of 
 unbounded admiration for her husband and trusts 
 iim unconditionally, everything goes on well in its 
 way ; but on the day when the confidence is des- 
 ;royed, on the day when she discerns what the man 
 really is for whom she has sacrificed so much — on 
 ;hat day there is division in her soul. Either she 
 Tiust give up herself, her identity, or she must take it 
 sack. Ibsen, as is well-known, chooses the latter 
 
DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 217 
 
 course ; he makes her break the degrading bonds of 
 such a marriage, exactly as in the earlier play he 
 makes his ideal personages break the bonds in 
 which society has fettered them. Just as he then 
 pointed out the dangers to the individual which lie 
 beneath society, so he here discovers similar perils 
 beneath marriage, and ends by breaking his staff 
 over the whole class of married lives in which the 
 husband is everything and the wife nothing. 
 
 The close of "A Doll's House" gave rise to 
 much dissentient criticism; long columns were 
 written against it, and the upshot of all this writ- 
 ing was that it was pronounced immoral. 
 
 Ibsen naturally regarded the matter in a different 
 light; to him it was far more immoral to continue 
 to live together under such conditions. "But the 
 children ! " people asked ; " what is to become of 
 them ? Is it not inexcusable in a mother to abandon 
 her children ? " " Well, the children ; do you sup- 
 pose it would be any better for them if such a 
 married life were to subsist ? " replied Ibsen, with 
 another question. 
 
 This question was embodied in Gengangere 
 (Ghosts). This play and "A Doll's Hquse" in a 
 certain sense complete and supplement each other. 
 Supposing that Nora, after quitting her husband's 
 house, had returned next day — supposing that the 
 man were not merely coarse-minded and ignoble, but 
 hcentious and vulgar — supposing that they had as 
 yet no family, but that children were born to them 
 
i8 DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 
 
 ifter their reunion — we have the circumstances which 
 lifferentiate Nora Helmer and Helena Alving. 
 Helena, like Nora, had fled from her husband, who, 
 ike Helmer, is miserable at her departure. She 
 akes refuge under the roof of Pastor Manders ; but 
 his typical representative of public opinion per- 
 suades her to return to Alving, hbertine as he is, 
 ind enfeebled in mind and body, and he resumes 
 lis old life with her as though nothing had hap- 
 pened. What wiU come of it ? 
 
 The answer is to this effect : The wife's ineffectual 
 ittempt at escape has crushed her independence ; 
 ihe no longer dares to do or to leave undone the 
 ;hings she herself believes to be right or wrong; 
 ;he fears to come into collision with the ideas 
 md views of others. And seeing that she, the run- 
 iway wife, will be held accountable for her husband's 
 iberrations as soon as they are known, she does 
 dl she can to hide his life from the eyes of the 
 ATorld. She becomes a victim of the universal 
 lypocrisy. She must send away her little son 
 IS soon as he is of an age to begin to apprehend 
 ;he true state of affairs. To understand them too 
 ;arly will be fatal to him, so he must go, however 
 Dainful and otherwise mischievous it may be. It is 
 "or the child's benefit that she continues to live this 
 ife ; but the benefit, after all, is not great. Alving 
 :ontinues his life of debauchery, and she, in fear and 
 mguish, struggles to preserve his good name because 
 ivevy stain on it will lie doubly black on hers. Even 
 
DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 219 
 
 after his death she tries to protect his reputation, 
 concealing his misdeeds and respecting his memory ; 
 and to this end, she founds a hospital. 
 
 But through all these efforts, prompted by her 
 slavish dread of society, she is aware of a craving 
 to rebel against the power whose slave she is. Her 
 meditations gradually convince her of the hoUowness 
 of all the conditions which society holds up to 
 admiration as sacred and noble in themselves, but 
 which she knows only under a contemptible and 
 distorted aspect. The relations between husband 
 and wife, brother and sister, father and son, appear 
 to her mind, trained by bitter experience, as no 
 more than empty formulas, pleasing figures of 
 speech, which once, no doubt, wore a nimbus, so 
 to speak, but have preserved it only as a result of 
 that human weakness which Andersen described 
 in "The Emperor's New Clothes." 
 
 And then, at last, the son comes home and makes 
 use of his experience of life to demonstrate the 
 hollowness of the relation between mother and son, 
 the only tie which had escaped her criticism. But 
 above. aU, the results of her return to her husband 
 have not been eradicated. Oswald still suffers 
 from disease inherited from his father; and the 
 relations of Oswald to Regine suggest an abyss of 
 possibiHty. 
 
 To this lead the prdinary notions of hfe; this 
 is the outcome of those commonplace views which 
 hover about us like soulless ghosts. Lift the curtain. 
 
220 DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 
 
 tear away the hypocrisies which cover the surface, 
 and self-interest grins at us ; not only in such natures 
 as those of Regine or the carpenter Engstrand, but 
 even in so respectable and thick-skinned a member 
 of society as Pastor Manders. 
 
 In no other work has Ibsen dissected social morality 
 so completely or so extensively. He knew how super- 
 ficial the morality must be which led people to regard 
 the close of " A Doll's House " as worthy of repro- 
 bation ; how much depravity and baseness, coward- 
 liness and hypocrisy, it must cover. He knew on 
 what insecure foundations society rests. Society's 
 morals were to him one vast bog ; only the very 
 lightest creatures could cross it without becoming 
 aware that there was no sohd ground under foot, 
 and any one whose ill-fortune it was to break through 
 the surface found that the deeper he went the more 
 rotten was the soil. Then, in his terror, he would 
 struggle to recover his footing, but found none. 
 Nay, it was worse than a bog ; it was as though 
 the very ground on which he stood sank beneath 
 his feet, and was suddenly swallowed up in the 
 yawning sea. 
 
 This was the impression produced on the first 
 appearance of " Ghosts." Its tremendous effect was 
 not merely the result of tragic grandeur, which was 
 all the more impressive for being taken directly 
 from contemporary life — its terrors lay in the bold- 
 ness and weightiness of its principles. Even Ibsen's 
 friends, who had watched him step by step from 
 
DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 221 
 
 drama to drama, started back at the first shock 
 from the abyss he opened at their feet, and tried to 
 save themselves by flight. The general public and 
 their representatives in the press raised a howl of 
 fury such as had not been heard since the first 
 performance of the " Comedy of Love ; " and now 
 in 1881, as then in 1862, the author himself was 
 publicly and privately attacked, and bespattered with 
 all the foul commonplace which the mob has always 
 in reserve when it desires to discount the effects of 
 some work of daring and noble genius. The eruption 
 of this mud-volcano affords no edifying spectacle ; 
 but nothing in fact was better fitted to make the 
 piece widely known and understood than the evi- 
 dence thus afforded of its truth. 
 
 That Ibsen was incensed by this reception of his 
 piece need not be said. In a shorter time than 
 usual he had another play finished, and this was 
 his self-defence and answer. 
 
 Dr. Tomas Stockmann, in E71 Folkefiende (An 
 Enemy of Society), is in the same predicament as 
 Ibsen. He has not indeed attempted to show that 
 the ordinary ethics of married life flow from an un- 
 wholesome source, but he has done something quite 
 analogous : he has pointed out the unhealthy state 
 of the baths in his native town. This rouses 
 opposition, and he is at once deserted ; indignation 
 spreads, no one will listen to him. The situation 
 is precisely that of Ibsen just after the production 
 of " Ghosts." He makes his hero discover that 
 
222 DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 
 
 society is contemptible and base, and Stockmann, of 
 course, speaks his mind, and tells society the truth : 
 It is no disgrace to be persecuted by society; on 
 the contrary, it is an honour which every soul above 
 the common should seek. Far from crushing those it 
 assails with such weapons, it makes them stronger ; 
 for the man who finds himself in agreement with 
 society is but a weak creature, an insignificant 
 individual, bound hand and foot by its traditions 
 and customs. No, "the strongest man is he who 
 stands most alone." 
 
 The mode of attack here adopted is both new and 
 interesting. It is not warfare carried on from a 
 safe shelter ; it is a direct attack all along the line, as 
 daring as possible; a charge in the open, without 
 any regard as to whether the line of advance offers 
 any uncovered points, even when the storming body 
 of ideas may reasonably fear an attack from the 
 rear. 
 
 Equally new and interesting is it to see that he 
 here takes the field in the name of freedom against 
 liberal opinions and the tyranny of the majority. 
 Which is in the right — genius or society, the 
 majority or the one ? " The majority always has 
 right on its side as well as truth," reply the repre- 
 sentatives of the majority, Hovstad and Billing. 
 " The majority never has right on its side, never, 
 I say," replies the Doctor. " Who constitute the 
 majority of the inhabitants of any country — the wise 
 or the fools ? — And it can never be right that the 
 
DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 223 
 
 ools should govern the wise. The majority have the 
 night, more's the pity — but they have not the right. 
 The right is with me, and a few, a very few, others, 
 hose who have assimilated the young, germinating 
 :ruths which are still too newly-born into the world 
 >f consciousness to have won a majority." " These 
 nen stand, as it were, outside the camp, among 
 ;he pioneers who have pushed so far ahead that the 
 compact majority' have not yet been able to catch 
 ;hem up." 
 
 From the point of view of art. En Folkefeinde is 
 not one of Ibsen's most successful works. It is 
 Impossible to defend the way in which, in the third 
 act, the allegory of the conduit is introduced to lead 
 lip to an attack on society ; the transition from the 
 image to the thing it represents has somewhat the 
 effect of a complete change of subject. But this 
 very lack of art is highly characteristic, as showing 
 the vehement indignation which gave rise to the 
 piece. So great was his wrath that the drama did 
 not afford it space enough ; it broke out of bounds 
 and found a second channel, exactly as in spring- 
 time a river bursts the dam. 
 
 The psychological treatment shows all Ibsen's 
 usual mastery ; although Stockmann's position is so 
 like his own, he has studied him objectively, so 
 completely from outside, that the piece may be 
 regarded as a masterpiece of modern psychology. 
 Stockmann is as full of individuality as the most 
 arrant naturalist can desire, and his evolution re- 
 
224 DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 
 
 markable at every stage. At first it seems a little 
 difficult to understand how a man who is so simple 
 in the first act can express himself as Stockmann 
 does in the fourth. But on closer examination this 
 is not strange. It is exactly because he is so simple 
 that the insight he suddenly gets into the state of 
 society has such a violent effect ; for that very 
 reason he takes the healthy view of the whole 
 matter without which he could not act as he does. 
 It is a brilliant stroke, too, when Ibsen makes him 
 come forward so boldly ; for it is precisely because 
 he pays no heed to trifles that he finds it easy to 
 set aside all petty considerations and fix his attention 
 solely on the main point. He is a quite new and 
 original type among Ibsen's creations, though his 
 development follows the same course as earlier 
 figures in these plays. 
 
 Meanwhile it must not be overlooked that there 
 is one thing new in this development : it goes a 
 stage further than in any former work by Ibsen. 
 Like Falk, Brand, Nora and others, Stockmann ends 
 in isolation ; but his isolation is not identical with 
 a flight from human intercourse. For a moment, 
 indeed, even Stockmann thinks of flight. " If only 
 I knew where a primaeval forest or a small South 
 Sea island was to be bought cheap," he says ; and 
 though this wish cannot be fulfilled, he still wishes 
 to be gone far from this " madding crowd." " We 
 will live no longer amid such meanness. Pack up 
 as quickly as you can, Katrine ; the sooner we are 
 
DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 225 
 
 off the better." But on maturer consideration he 
 gives up this plan ; he stays at his post to recruit 
 supporters for his ideas, and then begins the battle 
 again. 
 
 " Here is the battlefield ; here the jBght must be 
 fought ; here I will win the victory ! Shall I be 
 driven off the field by public opinion, by a ' compact 
 majority,' and such devilries ? No, thank you. 
 What I want is so clear and plain. I only want to 
 make it intelligible to still undeveloped brains that 
 the liberals are the worst foes of every free man — 
 that party-programmes choke off all young and 
 hopeful truths — that everlasting consideration for 
 other people's opinions sits on the head of morality 
 and justice so that at last life here will be horrible." 
 
 In these words hes the kernel of the task which 
 Ibsen set himself immediately on the general repro- 
 bation of " Ghosts " by the immense majority in 
 Scandinavian countries. It was a vigorous and. 
 decided answer to the attack on him : Ibsen was 
 not the man to be so easily scared. 
 
 But after this first blaze of wrath, expressed in 
 
 " An Enemy of the People," a sort of discouragement 
 
 seemed to have settled on the poet. Of what use, 
 
 after all, was his determined attitude ? Were men 
 
 in general capable of taking up such ideal views of 
 
 life as he had worked out in his dramas ? Did they, 
 
 on the whole, live under conditions which allowed 
 
 of a life of truth and freedom ? Were not the 
 
 individuals to whom the conditions of life were thus 
 
 p 
 
226 DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 
 
 favourable mere exceptions, and was not falsehood 
 quite as indispensable to the average human being 
 as air and food are to all ? It had been said, long 
 before, of Brand, that "his morality, if it were 
 carried out, would sacrifice half mankind to starva^ 
 tion for love of the ideal." Was not this in fact 
 true? And might it not be said with equal truth 
 of all Ibsen's views of life ? Was it not senseless 
 to go about with an uncompromising schedule of 
 ideal demands in his coat-tail pocket, particularly 
 when it was displayed only in the hovels of the 
 poor ? There were, as has been said, moments 
 when Ibsen was in this mind ; when he would ask 
 himself these questions, and when he was even 
 ready to answer them in the affirmative. 
 
 So he took up his ideal Titan once more, con- 
 templated him from another side, placed him in a 
 fresh environment, and set him face to face with a 
 contrast as a compensating force. 
 
 The piece in which he worked this out is sadder 
 and more pessimistic than anything else he has 
 written. Brandes and many later critics have 
 pointed out, and with justice, that behind Ibsen's 
 pessimistic views of mankind there is a firm opti- 
 mist belief in their capacity for improvement. How- 
 ever, when he wrote Vildanden (The Wild-Duck) 
 this belief seems for the time to have deserted 
 him. 
 
 Gregers Werle has none of Brand's power or 
 Stockmann's combativeness ; he is a poor, unhappy 
 
DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 227 
 
 dreamer, who is everywhere in the way, and who 
 seems really to have no function in h'fe but that of 
 the luckless "thirteenth at table." His thoughts 
 are of all that is best in man, and he has an honest 
 desire to help where help is needed ; but wherever 
 he makes the attempt mishap ensues, because he 
 is so bewildered by idealism and optimism that he 
 always misapprehends both the means and the end. 
 He wishes to help the friend of his youth out of the 
 mire in which he has sunk, and fancies that every- 
 thing is settled as soon as he brings the truth to 
 light ; but he only succeeds in giving his friend the 
 opportunity of displaying his poverty of spirit in all 
 its extent. He persuades Hedvig to sacrifice her- 
 self in order to win back her father's love ; but he 
 thus leads her to suicide, thereby giving Hjalmar 
 Ekdal another sensational article for his magazine. 
 Finally he throws everything over, and quits the 
 scene to put himself out of the world ; since, if life 
 is really what it is beginning to appear to him, it 
 is no longer worth living. 
 
 And in sharp contrast to this ill-starred Don 
 Quixote, we have Dr. Relling, with his theory of 
 life as a lie, and the practice he founds on it. 
 The world is a wretched place, men are but 
 bunglers ; what the devil is the use of trying to 
 haul them out of the mess ? Lies are their 
 element ; without them they would be about as 
 happy as a frog under an air-pump. " Deprive the 
 average man of the lies of life, and you deprive 
 
228 DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 
 
 him of happiness." " It is the motive power ; it 
 is the seton which the physician applies to his 
 patient's neck." Taking this view, Relhng labours 
 to counteract Gregers' endeavours — that is to say, 
 he does all he can to preserve the existence of the 
 lie among men ; and for those who cannot devise 
 a satisfactory lie of life, he invents one. Thus he 
 contrives that Molvik should imagine himself to 
 be " possessed," because otherwise the poor, kind- 
 hearted sot would long since have died of self- 
 contempt and despair ; and he puts into Hjalmar 
 Ekdal's head the monstrous fictions he has always 
 on his lips. Both he and Gregers Werle aim at 
 the same end, namely, at making folks happy and 
 contented ; but as to the means, they are diametri- 
 cally opposed, and thus they hate and abuse each 
 other as two sworn foes might do. To Relling, 
 Gregers is neither more nor less than a fool, 
 suffering from a fever of conscientiousness ; and to 
 Gregers, Relling is simply a cynic. Still, Ibsen 
 attributes some good qualities to this pessimist 
 prophet of the untruth ; a good heart beats under 
 his efforts in its service ; and when Hjalmar Ekdal 
 comes to judgment Ibsen is undoubtedly on Rell- 
 ing's side as against Gregers Werle. 
 
 Of all the blunderers depicted by Ibsen, Hjalmar 
 Ekdal has the honour of pre-eminent badness. 
 Peer Gynt is a man of honour and Stensgaard an 
 honest soul in comparison with this contemptible 
 creature, with his mouth always full of oil, bread 
 
DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 229 
 
 and butter, and fine phrases, smacking his lips 
 with as much enjoyment of the words as of the 
 food. There is nothing on earth which does not 
 afford him occasion for speechifying ; he is not 
 moved by events, but easily becomes emotional 
 when he hears himself talking about them, and 
 then he goes about greatly edified by his own 
 pathos. The figure is powerfully drawn, with a 
 few broad touches ; sometimes the colour is laid 
 on so strongly that the picture has rather too great 
 a resemblance to a caricature ;' but we cannot laugh 
 with a clear conscience ; such abjectness is too 
 gross to raise an honest laugh ; it rouses only 
 disgust and aversion. If all ordinary men were of 
 so base a stamp Relling would be altogether in Ihe 
 right, and Gregers altogether in the wrong ; but 
 then Ibsen's whole warfare against duplicity and 
 falsehood would be in vain, for the spirit of truth 
 and freedom, the real pillars of society, would find 
 no home among men for ever. 
 
 However, the desperate mood which gave birth 
 to Vildanden was of no long duration. It has dis- 
 appeared from Ibsen's later works, and his ideal of 
 life is seen once more under a nobler and more 
 pleasing aspect than ever. 
 
 Rosmersholm is closely connected with Ibsen's 
 last stay in Norway, in the summer of 1885. Since 
 his former visit to his native land the great political 
 struggle had been fought out, and had left behind 
 it a fanaticism and bitterness which quite amazed 
 
230 DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 
 
 him. He was struck by the intolerant tone which 
 prevailed ; he was painfully impressed by the viru- 
 lent and vulgar way in which persons were assailed 
 instead of causes being fought for ; and it saddened 
 him to see the feuds to which the contest had given 
 rise. Men who had formerly been the best friends 
 were now the bitterest foes, although they had done 
 each other no personal injury, but had merely taken 
 up different views in life. The impression made 
 on him was, on the whole — as he said in a con- 
 versation at the time — that Norway was inhabited 
 no longer by two million men but by two million 
 cats and dogs. 
 
 This feeling found utterance in the picture of 
 party-warfare in Rosmersholm. The bitterness of 
 the losing party is admirably represented by Rector 
 Kroll ; and the cowardly fear, on the part of the win- 
 ners, of speaking out plainly, is no less character- 
 istically embodied in Mortensgaard, the freethinker 
 and expediency-monger in politics, who considers 
 it indispensable to recruit Christian allies. " Peder 
 Mortensgaard is the leader and chief of the future," 
 says Brendel ; " I have never stood face to face with 
 a greater. Peder Mortensgaard has in him a natural 
 turn for omnipotence. He does everything he 
 wishes because he never wishes to do more than 
 he can. Peder Mortensgaard is capable of living 
 without an ideal ; and that, you see, is the great 
 secret of action and success. It is the sum total 
 of worldly wisdom." 
 
DRAMAS OF THE DAY.- 231 
 
 And Rosmer, speaking of the struggle generally, 
 says : " Men grow wicked in the strife which is 
 now going on. Peace, and gladness, and recon- 
 ciliation must be brought home to men's minds." 
 Men must be ennobled — that is to say, their minds 
 must be set free and their wills purified. And 
 though Rosmer himself is not the man to solve the 
 problem, still it stands forth as a goal to which the 
 drama points. It is not merely the cause of truth 
 and freedom for which Ibsen is here fighting ; it is 
 the cause also of endurance and humanity. 
 
 But deeper than the antagonism of parties is the 
 contrast represented in Rosmer and Rebecca. 
 
 Rebecca is at first recklessness personified. " I 
 believe I could have carried through anything, 
 whatever it were — at that time. For I then had 
 my intrepid, free-born will," she says in the fourth 
 act. " I did not know what caution meant. There 
 was no situation which could daunt me.'' In this 
 respect she was the direct opposite of Peer Gynt, 
 since for her there was no interval between thought 
 and action, between desire and effort ; she had 
 courage to decide and audacity to act, and had 
 thus acquired immense power over those among 
 whom she lived, men and women whose views of 
 life had made them vacillating and timid. They 
 are failures, feeble individualities ; she on the 
 contrary is, in her way, developed and complete ; 
 this is the secret of her superiority. And besides 
 this " free-born will " which circumstances had 
 
232 DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 
 
 never fettered, she had an independent view of 
 life. Her action is never hindered by prejudice, 
 and her clear strong spirit has made it a necessity 
 to her " to live in the new time that was dawning ; 
 to share in all the new ideas." She wants to 
 contribute to the triumph of these new ideas, and 
 as she has heard that Ulrik Brendel had had a 
 great influence over Pastor Rosmer as a boy, she 
 determines to obtain a similar influence over him 
 and win him to these views. 
 
 But then purely personal interests get mixed up 
 with her schemes. She has come from Finmark, 
 and here, in the South, a vast world seems to have 
 opened before her. She has lived in humble and 
 depressing circumstances ; then an irresistible crav- 
 ing for happiness had come upon her ; she had 
 torn off the net that enclosed her, quite convinced 
 that she should succeed in achieving happiness in 
 one way or another. But hardly is she settled 
 there when she falls madly in love with Pastor 
 Rosmer with " a wild uncontrollable desire to be 
 his." " It came upon me like a storm over the 
 sea ; it was like one of those hurricanes we have 
 sometimes in the winter, up in the North. It 
 seizes you, and drags you away as far as it will. 
 No thought of resistance." And for this passion 
 she stakes all. What right has Rosmer's ailing 
 brain-sick wife to stand in the way of his freedom 
 and her love ? Beate makes his life gloomy and 
 wretched ; never till she is no more can there be 
 
DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 233 
 
 any hope for him of a hfe in Hberty, happiness, and 
 peace. So she drives Beate, step by step, to 
 suicide in the mill-race. 
 
 When the piece begins, a year has elapsed 
 since this catastrophe. A most tender, pure, and 
 poetical relationship has grown up between Rosmer 
 and Rebecca, a relationship based on love, though 
 it has never been named between them, in which 
 the spiritual trustfulness of a perfect marriage 
 exists without its external confidential conditions ; 
 a relationship full of devotion and fervency, but 
 free from all the violence of passion, in which their 
 thoughts but not their bodies meet and embrace, 
 and in which the intimate " thou " of daily speech 
 is the only outward sign on either side of their 
 mutual love. 
 
 From the first moment when Rebecca had entered 
 his house Rosmer had felt himself attracted to her. 
 He listened to all she said, imbibed her ideas, and 
 read her books. He has no independence of nature, 
 and is very open to influence, so her superiority is 
 constantly more and more evident as they discuss 
 the questions of general importance which arise in 
 conversation ; and he, by degrees, allows himself 
 to be drawn away from the views of life he had 
 formerly respected, till at last he shares her opinions 
 on every point. In this respect it is she who gives 
 and he who receives. 
 
 But in another respect the situation is reversed. 
 His lofty and noble way of thinking, his purely 
 
234 DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 
 
 human impulses, and his lovable nature are irresist- 
 ible in their effects, and ennoble hers. Her strong 
 will is checked and broken by living with him, and 
 her " hideous sensual passion, all those tempestuous 
 powers have sunk to rest, and fall asleep." " A 
 peace of mind " comes over her, " repose as that of 
 a bird-rock ^ under the midnight sun up with us." 
 She sees that her feeling was not love, and so real 
 love finds its way into her soul — that love which 
 desires nothing for itself, but is ready to sacrifice 
 everything for its object, " that great unselfish love 
 which is content with living together as we have 
 lived." Then, when she has at last gained her 
 end, when he entreats her to take the dead woman's 
 place and be his wife, she dares not, for she now 
 suddenly sees that the thing she has done must 
 stand between them for ever. Love has given 
 her courage for confession and strength for self- 
 sacrifice, so she saves his lost sense of innocence, 
 and his faith in her love and in his own power to 
 elevate men, by telling him all and sacrificing her 
 life. 
 
 But behind their individual fate two distinct 
 principles of life may be discerned, in which 
 Rosmer and Rebecca are respectively entangled. 
 Rosmer is the outcome of the old worn-out type 
 of culture which coerced a man's will and his views 
 of life. His views may indeed be set free, but his 
 
 ^ The reference is to one of the islets, white with sea-birds, which 
 form so prominent a feature of the coast of Finmarlc. 
 
DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 235 
 
 will is and must remain unavailing. Rebecca is 
 the outcome of young unfettered nature ; her views 
 are broad and her will firm, but it is not purified 
 until too late. Hence both these representatives 
 of imperfect leading come to destruction ; but over 
 their bodies the drama holds on high Ibsen's lofty 
 and splendid dream for the future, of man with 
 freedom of impulse and a purified will. That is 
 redeemed mankind as Ibsen has dreamed of it ; 
 mankind made happy, and living in freedom, inno- 
 cence, and joy. This is the " third Empire," of 
 which Maximos the Mystic, and the Emperor Julian 
 dreamed too, and which Ibsen never ceases to 
 believe in. And devoted love is designated as the 
 way to this consummation, in contrast with self- 
 love. Rosmersholm was written to glorify it ; its 
 elevating and edifying power constitutes the credo 
 of the piece. It is indeed Ibsen's own confession 
 of faith. While he lashes meanness and falsehood 
 in the name of freedom and truth, self-sacrificing 
 love is always his watchword when he rides forth 
 to do battle with selfishness. 
 
 Ibsen paid a visit to Norway in the summer of 
 1886, and this was intimately connected with the 
 composition of another play. The poet gave but a 
 short time to the capital, but stayed for some weeks 
 at the little town of Molde on the west coast of Nor- 
 way, one of the chief haJting-places in the route of 
 European tourists on their way from Stavanger to 
 the North Cape, and therefore visited every summer 
 
236 DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 
 
 by innumerable strangers. The impression made 
 on him by the great tide of travellers was, perhaps, 
 one of the strongest of those which in that year 
 led Ibsen to feel the magnitude of the new con- 
 ditions which had grown up during the twelve 
 years of his absence from his native land. From 
 this to some extent he derived the background of 
 his new drama. 
 
 But the sea itself, on which the town stands, 
 made a far deeper impression on his temperament. 
 He would stand for hours on the landing-pier, 
 gazing down into the depths or up at the distance. 
 And when, in the following year, he was select- 
 ing a retreat for the summer months, he went 
 to Jutland, instead of to the Tyrol as usual, and 
 again it was the sea which enchanted and absorbed 
 him as he wandered alone on the sandy shore. 
 
 The moods resulting from these walks form the 
 fundamental key of the " Lady from the Sea," ■^ of 
 which Mr. Gosse gives the following account : — • 
 
 " Ibsen's Christmas gift to his admirers, his new 
 drama of ' The Lady from the Sea,' is but a few 
 days old as I write these pages, and my impression 
 of it is still too fresh to be quite fixed. Perhaps 
 the charm of novelty has biassed me, but I think 
 not ; I fancy this new work will be admitted to 
 
 ^ The original edition of Mr. Jaeger's book was published in the 
 early part of 1888, and therefore contains no account of Ibsen's latest 
 production, the five-act prose drama Fruenfra Havet {The Lady from 
 the Sea). The above description of it is quoted, with the author's per- 
 mission, from the new edition of Mr. Edmund Gosse's Northern. 
 Studies (pp. 101-103). 
 
DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 237 
 
 be one of the brightest jewels in the poet's crown. 
 He has never been more daring in his analysis of 
 character, never more brilliant in his evolution of 
 it than here ; and there is thrown over the whole 
 play a glamour of romance, of mystery, of land- 
 scape beauty, which has not appeared in Ibsen's 
 work to anything like the same extent since Peer 
 Gynt. And, moreover, after so many tragedies, 
 this is a comedy. The title can scarcely be trans- 
 lated, because a havfrue is a mermaid, a ' sea- 
 lady,' and there is an under-meaning in this. It 
 is the old story of the mortal who 'left lonely for 
 ever the kings of the sea.' 
 
 " In a little coast-town of Norway — the district 
 physician. Dr. Wangel, being left a widower with 
 two daughters, thinks he will marry again. But 
 at the mouth of the fjord, in a lighthouse on a 
 desolate skerry, an exquisite girl lives with her 
 father, the keeper. Wangel makes her acquaint- 
 ance, falls in love with her, and persuades her to 
 marry him. He frankly tells her of his own 
 previous happy marriage, and she confesses it is 
 not the first time she has been wooed. But the 
 alliance is a fortunate one, until she loses her 
 firstborn and only child. From that time she be- 
 comes gloomy, wayward, and morbid, and though 
 she loves her husband she seems divided from 
 him. She is still to all the town ' the lady from 
 the sea,' the sea-wife. She pines for the roaring 
 tides, for the splendour and resonance of the un- 
 
238 DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 
 
 conquerable ocean, and nothing takes the place of 
 the full salt breeze she has abandoned. She 
 bathes every day in the harbour, but she disdains 
 these tame and spiritless waters of the fjord, and 
 declares that they do her no good. She has lived 
 the very life of the sea; her blood has tides in it, 
 is subject to ebb and flow. She has been trans- 
 planted too late from her ocean-rock ; she pines 
 like a sea-weed in a tank or a petrel in a cage. 
 
 " But there is more than this to afQict her spirit. 
 The old alliance she hinted at was a betrothal to 
 a nameless man, a Finn, nursed, perhaps, by some 
 storm-gathering witch, mate of a ship, who has 
 exercised an absorbing influence over her. He is 
 a creature of the sea, a sort of impersonation of 
 the waves. She confesses all this to her husband, 
 and tells him that she one day received a letter 
 from this man, summoning her to a rendezvous on 
 a desolate promontory. When she got there he 
 told her that he had murdered his captain (a godly 
 slaughter, by his own account), and was now flying 
 from justice. He took a ring from her, tied it 
 to one of his own, and flung it. out to sea. The 
 result of this enforced betrothal, to which her own 
 will was never- a partner, is that she feels ever 
 more and more the sea, embodied' in this wild, 
 seafaring Finn, coming between her and her hus- 
 band. At last, in the play, the Finn returns to 
 claim her, and it is not until her husband leaves 
 her perfectly free to choose between the two men. 
 
DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 239 
 
 and liberates her individual responsibility, that the 
 morbid charm is broken, and she rapturously selects 
 to remain with her husband, while the merman 
 goes desperately down into his waters. It is im- 
 possible here to give the smallest idea of the 
 imagination, subtlety, and wit concentrated in 
 carrying out this curious story. ' The Lady from 
 the Sea ' is connected with the previous plays by its 
 emphatic defence of individuality and its statement 
 of the imperative necessity of developing it ; but 
 the tone is quite unusually sunny, and without a 
 tinge of pessimism. It is in some respects the 
 reverse of Rosmersholm ; the bitterness of restrained 
 and baulked individuahty, which ends in death, 
 being contrasted with the sweetness of emancipated 
 and gratified individuality, which leads to health 
 and peace." 
 
 Truth, liberty, and love are the corner-stones 
 of the grand and solemn fabric which Ibsen has 
 constructed in the course of years. If we study it 
 as a whole we are surprised to see how thorough 
 the work is. As an intellect Ibsen has developed 
 with a logical precision which is unique perhaps 
 among writers. The distance between his starting- 
 point and his present standing-ground is, indeed, 
 unusually great, and the intermediate stages are 
 many ; hence it is a matter of course that in pro- 
 cess of time he has given up much which he once 
 believed in. But a traveller, as he makes his way 
 onwards, loses, as each new view opens on him, 
 
240 DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 
 
 some portion of the landscape he is leaving behind 
 him ; and the chief thing is that the fresh point 
 of view should be higher than the last — the out- 
 look grow freer from work to work. The law ol 
 Ibsen's intellectual evolution has not been merely 
 progress, it has also been an unbroken climb 
 upwards. 
 
 This is equally true of Ibsen's career as a 
 writer. His historical dramas are superior in 
 technical merit to his romantic dramas, and his 
 dramas of modern life as much superior to the 
 historical plays. 
 
 A whole treatise might be written on the form 
 of Ibsen's modern plays, and such a volume will 
 some day undoubtedly be written ; for Ibsen fills 
 as distinctive a place among the authors of the day 
 in technical matters as in intellectual quality. His 
 dramatic work is " epoch-making " in the history 
 of the stage, and must certainly exercise a marked 
 influence on the drama of the future. There is no 
 other living writer in Europe of whom so much 
 can be said. 
 
 In this century the drama has not in fact kept 
 pace with literary development in other directions. 
 It has lagged behind the novel, which fills so 
 prominent a position that it might almost be re- 
 garded as the special art-manifestation of the day. 
 And it owes this pre-eminence to the fact that the 
 demand of our time is for probability and natu- 
 ralism. This demand the stage cannot satisfy. 
 
DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 241 
 
 While all that is conventional is banished from the 
 novel, it still must rule in the drama. In Augier, 
 in Alexandre Dumas ^/s, in Sardou, in short, in all 
 the foremost dramatists of our time, we find so 
 much that is conventional that a naturalistic critic 
 like Zola could with reason pronounce a severe 
 sentence of condemnation on them ; and even in 
 Zola's own dramatic efforts, in Therese Raquin, 
 for instance, conventionalism plays so important 
 a part that it would be hard to recognise in its 
 author the leader of the naturalistic school. 
 
 But the conventional has vanished from Ibsen's 
 plays ; he has succeeded in constructing a new 
 dramatic formula answering to the naturalistic 
 element in novel-writing. Its peculiarity is that it 
 does not begin quite where ordinary plays begin ; 
 it has its beginning where ordinary plays usually 
 end. All Ibsen's later works are in fact amplified 
 catastrophes. The situation is complete before the 
 drama opens ; all the converging factors are in the 
 part ; the piece deals only with the immediate 
 state of things ; it has but to explain the situation 
 and work up to the ultimate results. If an ordinary 
 dramatist had written " A Doll's House," Nora's 
 forgery would have formed the crisis of the piece, 
 and the issues would have been revealed in the 
 last act. Ibsen, on the contrary, takes these is- 
 sues for his leading theme ; the deed has been 
 done before the curtain rises. Again, an ordinary 
 dramatist would not have omitted Rebecca West's 
 
 Q 
 
242 DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 
 
 plots against Beate Rosmer from his play ; on the 
 contrary, he would have made use of them. Ibsen 
 is content to show us their moral and practical 
 results in every detail. 
 
 This analytical method of construction is allied 
 to the old Greek tragedy as Sophocles composed 
 it, and as Schiller tried to reproduce it in Maria 
 Stuart. What is great and distinctive in Ibsen 
 consists in this : that he has taken up the scheme 
 of the analytical drama to work out a naturalistic 
 picture in dramatic form. While the ordinary play 
 can rarely give us more than a sketch from the 
 psychological point of view, the analytical form 
 allows of a highly-finished presentment of the soul, 
 wherein men betray their most secret thoughts 
 without having recourse to soliloquies, or any such 
 improbable contrivance. This Ibsen perceived, and 
 availed himself of the discovery ; and this is what 
 gives his modern plays that unique and vivid stamp 
 of actuality which distinguishes them. 
 
 At the same time the dialogue has gradually 
 grown more and more natural. It is a great defect, 
 from which most dramatic works suffer, that all the 
 persons on the stage speak in a greater or less 
 degree in the manner of the writer. In Ibsen, on 
 the contrary, each speaker has his own manner ; 
 and this is so consistently carried through that 
 their peculiarities can be detected even in the 
 smallest trifles. Any one who has once read 
 "An Enemy of the People," "The Wild Duck," or 
 
DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 243 
 
 Rosniersholm (in the original), would recognise a 
 speech of Doctor Stockmann's, of Gina Ekdal's, or 
 Ulrik Brendel's, among a hundred. 
 
 As the originator of the analytical modern 
 drama, Ibsen has now a high position in the 
 literature of the nineteenth century throughout 
 the world ; and the great attention which his later 
 works have attracted, not only in Germany, but in 
 England and America, sufficiently proves that his 
 importance is becoming recognised on both sides 
 of the Atlantic. Since Holberg no Scandinavian 
 writer has filled such a place in Germany as Ibsen 
 now does; his work is actually marking a turning- 
 point in German literature, for a whole crowd of 
 young writers and critics have uplifted it as a 
 banner round which they are rallying against the 
 old school of German dramatic poetry. 
 
 But the multitude have not as yet fully recog- 
 nised his importance, either in Germany or in 
 the North; — indeed, less in Norway than in Ger- 
 many. The public do not feel easy face to face 
 with this stern judge ; his work has something un- 
 canny in it, and his tremendous tragic sense terri- 
 fies them. His depth of thought makes too great 
 demands on their intellectual energy, and he is 
 therefore pronounced obscure and unintelligible. 
 In fact, he is often entirely misunderstood ; of this 
 there have been many instances. 
 
 But he goes calmly on his way, without caring 
 for the applause of the general public. " Neither 
 
244 DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 
 
 thanks nor threats affect the man who wholly wills 
 the thing he wills." He has solved the problem 
 of " being himself," and for that reason he is so 
 grand a figure. 
 
 This absolute independence is recognisable even 
 in the outer man. Ibsen is not a tall man, but he 
 nevertheless gives an impression of importance. 
 The torso is unusually powerfully built, and his 
 head strikingly set on the shoulders. His face is 
 completely framed in grey hair and beard, both far 
 more abundant than is common with men of Ibsen's 
 age (sixty-two in 1 890). The firmly-set mouth, steady 
 gaze through his spectacles, and bushy eyebrows, 
 give the whole face a look of having just come to 
 some determination ; and above the other features 
 rises so powerful a forehead that we are tempted to 
 compare it to the idealised head of the Jupiter. 
 
 His whole frame suggests combativeness and 
 strength. Once, when I heard him compare the 
 Danish poet Grundtvig to a stunted but powerful 
 Roman holm-oak, I thought to myself that this simile 
 gave a no less striking image of his own exterior. 
 
 No one ever heard of Ibsen's being ill. Even 
 the infirmities which age commonly brings with it 
 have spared him so far. He looks the very picture 
 of health. His enjoyment of his food is such that 
 many a youth might envy him, and neither draughts 
 nor storms, cold nor rain, seem to affect him. 
 
 His life — a quiet, happy family life — has been 
 spent, since he quitted Norway, in Germany and 
 
DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 245 
 
 Italy, with his wife — Susannah Daae Ibsen, a 
 daughter of Provost Thoresen of Bergen, a step- 
 daughter of the novelist Magdalena Thoresen — 
 and till within a few years with his son Sigurd 
 Ibsen, now attache to the Norwegian Minister at 
 Washington, U.S.A. 
 
 He is to the last degree methodical in all he 
 does. We should seek long and far before we 
 found another man whose day's work is regulated 
 to a minute like that of Henrik Ibsen. He rises 
 at seven in summer, in winter a little later. He takes 
 a very long time to dress, for he has acquired the 
 habit of walking to and fro and thinking out his 
 compositions while performing his toilet, which 
 therefore occupies him above an hour and a half. 
 He then takes a light breakfast, and as the clock 
 strikes nine he sits down to work. He stops work 
 at one, and takes a walk before his midday meal. 
 In the afternoon he reads, takes a light supper, 
 and goes early to bed. Thus the days are spent 
 from year's end to year's end ; even when travel- 
 ling he tries to keep to his regular hours as far as 
 possible. 
 
 With increasing years Ibsen's natural reserve 
 has increased. In a tete-a-tete he can be com- 
 municative ; but when more persons are present 
 he finds it difficult to talk. He has that " coy- 
 ness of spirit " of which the bard Jatgeir speaks 
 in Kongsemnerne. He never is quite at ease save 
 when he is at work. 
 
246 DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 
 
 His mode of work is characteristic and interest- 
 ing. Wlien he has decided on a subject, he thinks 
 it over carefully for a long time without setting his 
 pen to paper. A great deal of this thinking-work 
 is done in the course of his long solitary walks. 
 
 When the scheme has been thought out in 
 broad masses he writes a first sketch, and then the 
 elaboration proceeds rapidly. At last the whole 
 thing is widtten out ; but this, to Ibsen, is no more 
 than a preliminary study. It is not till this is 
 finished that he seems gradually to become familiar 
 with his personages ; then does he first know their 
 natures thoroughly, and how they express them- 
 selves. Then the whole is completely rewritten, 
 and the third is a fair copy. He never sends out 
 a piece of work till it is perfectly finished in a final 
 copy. Summer is his best time for work; the 
 winter is principally spent in thinking out plots 
 and plans ; these are worked out in the summer. 
 Almost all his pieces have been written in the 
 summer season ; of all the works he has published 
 since leaving Norway only two have dragged on 
 into the winter-: "The Young Men's League," and 
 " Emperor and Galilean." 
 
 When Ibsen begins to work out a play he takes 
 no more food than is absolutely indispensable. A 
 morsel of bread and a small cup of coffee are all he 
 allows himself in the morning before sitting down 
 to his desk. He fancies that if he took anything 
 more it would hinder him in his work. 
 
DRAMAS OF THE DAY. 247 
 
 When the author of these notes went to see him 
 once at Munich, he was amazed to see how small 
 Ibsen's work-room was. He explained this by the 
 fact that he never shuts himself in when at work ; 
 he likes to walk about, in and out of three or four 
 rooms. Thus he spends the four hours alternately 
 walking and writing, while from time to time he 
 takes a few whiffs at a very short pipe. He never 
 smokes at any other time. In these working hours 
 he prefers to be alone. The only person who can 
 be with him without hindering him is his wife ; but 
 even she generally leaves him to himself, for fear 
 of disturbing him. 
 
 In these lonely and restless wanderings Henrik 
 Ibsen has composed those profound and earnest 
 masterpieces which have opened the eyes of the 
 literary world, and shown that he is one of the 
 most original and fully equipped intellects of our 
 time. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abildgaard, T. F., 59, 60 
 Akershus, Paa (At Akershus), 197 
 Album, lines for an {Stainhogsrim), 
 
 197 
 Amtmandens Dotre (The Official's 
 
 Daughters), 115, 129 
 Ancestry of Ibsen, 1-4 
 Andersen, H. C, 219 
 Andhrimner (see also Manden), 65 
 Appeal to Norwegians and Swedes, 
 
 26 
 Art, Ibsen's love of, 21 
 Asbjornsen, 113, 141, 164 
 Augier, Emile, 241 
 
 B alders Dod, 100, 107 
 
 Ball, Reminiscences of a(^a/;7«jKrt'«'), 
 
 SO 
 Ballad, Ibsen on the heroic, 91, 
 
 100 
 j5a//o«i5r«w/ (The Letter by Balloon), 
 
 204 
 Bahninder (Reminiscences of a 
 
 Ball), 50 
 Bergen, 70, 99 
 Bergen theatre, Ibsen's connection 
 
 with, 65, 66, 90, 95, 98, 112 
 Bergmanden (The Mountaineer), 64 
 Berlin, visits to, 137 
 Billedgalleriet, I (In the Picture- 
 
 Gallery), 124, 197 
 Bjornson, Bjornstjerne, 53, 55, 109, 
 
 no, ni, 129, 133, 176, 180 
 Bjornson's Mellem Slagene (Be- 
 tween the Fights), 100 
 Bjornson's Synnove Solbakken, loi, 
 
 107, 130 
 Blanc, T., 72 
 Blom, H. O., Ill, 112 
 
 Borgaard, 108, no, 112 
 Botten-Hansen, Paul, 21, 58, 60, 
 
 100, no, 112, 113 
 Brand, 45, 141, 142-162, 171, 180, 
 
 186, 187, 188, 190, 226. 
 Brand, influence of Lammers, 13 
 Brand, origin of Northern Valley 
 
 in, 141 
 Brandes, Dr. Georg, 45, 82, 115, 
 
 123, 155, 163, 204, 226 
 Broder i Nod, En (A Brother in 
 
 Need), 26 
 Byggeplaner (Plans for Building), 
 
 197, 198 
 
 Ccesar's Frafald {Ossax\ Apostasy), 
 
 187. 191 
 
 Catilina, 24, 26, 27, 30-41, 42, 59, 
 83, 94, 1 86 ; revised re-issue, 
 194-5 
 
 Christiania, Ibsen and, 53, 68, 87, 
 98, 136, 137, 194 
 
 Christiania described, 127 
 
 Christiania theatre, 98, 108, 132, 
 
 I33> 181 
 Collett, Camilla, Amtmandenh 
 
 DStre, 115, 129 
 Comedy of Love {Kaerlighedens 
 
 Komedie), 5, 47, 113, 118, 130, 
 
 134, 135, 161, 171, 180 
 Comedy of Love, price paid for, 
 
 133 
 Copenhagen, 69, 191 
 Copenhagen, royal theatre at, 108 
 
 Daae, L. L., 113 
 Danish-German War, sonnets on, 
 
 26, 134, 203 
 Dawison acting at Dresden, 69, 70 
 
INDEX. 
 
 249 
 
 Det Tordtude True (Coming Thun- 
 der), 129 
 
 Devrient, Emil, 69 
 
 Digte og F2j«r of Bjbrnson, 129 
 
 Doll's House, A (Et Dukkehjeni), 
 211-217, 24.1 
 
 Doubt and Hope ( Tvivl og Haab), 
 48 
 
 Dresden, visits to, 69, l8l 
 
 Edderficgleii (The Eider-Duck), 197, 
 
 198 
 Egypt, Ibsen guest of the Khedive, 
 
 178 
 Eider-Duck (see Edderfuglen) 
 Elster, Kristian, 176 
 Emperor and Galilean {Xejser og 
 
 Galilceer), 181, 186-193, 246 
 Emperor Julian, the (Kejser Julian) 
 
 187, 190, 191, 193 
 Enemy of the People, An (EoUie- 
 
 fiende, En), 62, 242 
 Ewald, Johannes, 107 . 
 
 Ewald, Balders Dod, 103 
 
 Faith, The Basis of {Troens 
 
 Grund), 200 
 Faye, A., 94 
 
 Fearing Light (Lysraed), 197 
 Feasting at Solhaug (Gildet paa 
 
 Solhaug), 84, 85, 86, 88, 90, 92, 
 
 96, 106, 122, 186 
 Festivities at Skien, 13 
 Franco-German War, 204 
 Friele, Christian, 113 
 Fruen fra Havet (see Lady from 
 
 the Sea) 
 Fru Inger til Oestraat, 74-83, 103, 
 
 130, 133 ; its revision, 196 
 Fugl og Fuglefaenger (Bird and 
 
 Bird-catcher), 64 
 
 Galleriet, /(In the Gallery), 197 
 
 Garborg, Arae, 53 
 
 Gengangere (Ghosts), •'^y-^^' 
 
 Giftas (see Married) 
 
 Gildet paa Solhatig (see Feasting 
 
 at Solhaug) 
 Goethe's Dance of Death, 48 
 Goldschmidts Korsaren, 61, 62 
 
 Gosse, Edmund, Northern Studies, 
 
 128, 236-239 
 Grimstad, 22-24, 41, 49 
 Grundvig, 244 
 Gundersen, Fru, 194 
 
 Haakon Jarl of Oehlenschlaeger, 
 
 100, 107 
 Haermandeiu paa Helgeland (see 
 
 Vikings in Helgeland) 
 Halvorsen on Ibsen, 18, 181, 182, 
 
 186, 187 
 Hardanger, Saturday Evening at 
 
 (En Lordagaften i Hardanger), 
 
 65, 197 
 Harring, Harro, 54^ 55 
 Heiberg, Ludwig, 68, 69, 108 
 Helge, Oehlenschlaeger's, 65 
 Helge Hundingsbane, 65 
 Hellesylt, Ibsen at, 1 40-1 
 Heltberg, 53 
 Heroic ballad, essay on influence 
 
 of the (Omkjaempevisen), 90, 95 
 Herre, Bemhard, 141 
 Hertz, Henrik, 87, 88 
 Hettner's, Herman, Das Moderne 
 
 Drama, 68, 73, 83 
 Highland Life (ffoj/jeldsliv), 142 
 Hoedt's acting, 69, 70 
 Hojfjeldsliv (see Highland Life). 
 Holberg, Ludwig, influence of his 
 
 dramatic works, 38, 68, 243 
 Holberg, Peder Paars, 142 
 Hostrup, J. K., 72 
 Hungary, To ( Til Ungarn), 25 
 
 Ibsen, Henrik, ancestry and birth, 
 1-5 ; childhood at Skien, 5-15 ; 
 first poem, 15; removal from 
 Skien, 15 ; early occupations, 16- 
 17 ; school life, 18 ; early style, 
 20 ; return to Skien, 21 ; love 
 of art, 21 ; apprenticed to apothe- 
 cary, 22, 23 ; resolution to ad- 
 vance, 24; excitement provoked 
 by Vaagner Skandinaver, 26 ; 
 revolutionary enthusiasm, 32, 60, 
 63 ; ideal ambition, 33-34 ; early 
 poems, 41-42, 44 ; early reflec- 
 tions and meditations, 48 ; ap- 
 pearance at twenty, 49-52 ; at 
 Q 2 
 
250 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Christiania, 53 ; under Heltberg's 
 instruction, 53 ; joins protest 
 against Harring's expulsion, 55 ; 
 recognised as an author, 58 ; 
 frugality, 59 ; narrowly escapes 
 arrest, 60 ; joint proprietor of 
 Manden, 61 ; influence of literary 
 study, 65 ; manager of Bergen 
 theatre, 65-66, 98 ; influence on 
 dramatic technique, 68 ; national 
 writer, 71 ; treatment of historic 
 drama, 74-^3 > dramatic success, 
 87 ; accused of plagiarism, 87 ; 
 high estimation of heroic ballad, 
 91 ; director of Christiania the- 
 atre, 98 ; his marriage, 98 ; adapts 
 style of sagas to dramatic poetry, 
 100 ; joins demand for Norwegian 
 drama and acting, 109 ; vice- 
 president of Norwegian Society, 
 III; views on love, 115-118; 
 adversely criticised by Christiania 
 press, 130-131 ; artistic adviser 
 of Old Theatre, 133; small in- 
 come, 132-133; friends try to 
 procure a place under Govern- 
 ment, 134; zeal for Scandinavian 
 cause, 1 34 ; state travelling al- 
 lowance granted, 137 ; impressions 
 of Rome, 1 39 ; attacks Norwegian 
 character in Brand, 143-153; 
 repeated in De Unges Forbund, 
 177 ; guest of Khedive of Egypt, 
 and present at opening of Suez 
 Canal, 178 ; recognised as a 
 writer of merit, 180 ; Storthing 
 allows an author's pension, 180 ; 
 autobiographicalspeechat Vienna, 
 182-186 ; height of his idealism 
 in "Emperor and Galilean," 191 ; 
 anecdote of Norwegian style, 194 ; 
 poetical writings, 196-200; re- 
 visits Norway, 202, 235 ; view of 
 Franco-German war, 204-205 ; 
 advocates woman's independence, 
 212-214 ; severe criticism of his 
 " Ghosts," 221 ; visits Molde, Jut- 
 land, and the Tyrol, 235-236 ; 
 rank as a writer of the day, 240 ; 
 originator of analytical modern 
 drama, 243 ; personal appearance. 
 
 244 ; his wife and family, 244- 
 
 245 ; habits, 245 ; method of work, 
 
 246 
 Ibsen, Knud (Canute), Henrik's 
 
 father, 2, 15 
 Ibsen, Sigurd, 245 
 Ibsen, Susannah Dane, wife of 
 
 Henrik, 245, 246-7 
 Italian scenery, 138, 139. 
 
 Jj«GER, Henkik, 93, 160, 236 
 Jotunhejm, 140 
 Justedaisrypa, 94 
 Jutland, visit to, 236. 
 
 Kaerlighedens Komedie (see Comedy 
 
 of Love) 
 Kejser Julian (see Emperor Julian, 
 
 The) 
 Kejser og Galilaer (see Emperor and 
 
 Galilean) 
 Kierkegaard, SbrenAbye, 155, 156, 
 
 160 
 Kjaempehojen (see Warrior's Barrow, 
 
 The) 
 Kjelland, 129 
 Kongsemner7ie (see Rivals for the 
 
 Throne) 
 Krapotkine, Prince, 207. 
 
 Lad of the Mill, The (Mollergutten), 
 
 43 
 Lady from the Sea, The (Fruenfra 
 
 Havet), 207, 236-239 
 Lammers, G. A. , influence on Brand, 
 
 13-14, 156-160 
 Landstad, M. B. , his Norsie Folkc- 
 
 viser, 85, 90, 93 
 Laxdola Saga, 104 
 Lincoln's Murder, Abraham, 204 
 London, Harrison's History of, 16- 
 
 17 
 Loss of the Son, The {Sonnetabel), 
 
 103 
 Lysraed (Fearing Light), 197. 
 
 Maalstraeverne, The, :68 
 Maaneskinsfart paa Havet (see 
 
 Moonlight Sail on the Sea), 44 
 Maaneskinssteinming (see Moon- 
 light Mood), 44 
 
INDEX. 
 
 251 
 
 Maaneskinsvandring eftey et Bal (see 
 Moonlight Walk after a Dance), 
 
 44 
 Man, The (Manden), 61-65 
 Manden (see Man, The) 
 Marie Stuart, 242 
 Markblomster og Potte-planter (see 
 
 Wild-flowers and Pot-plants), 85 
 Marriage of Ibsen, 98 
 j1/if//<'OT5'/flj'e««(Betweenthe'Fights), 
 
 100 
 Memory, The Power of {Mindets 
 
 Magt), 45-46, 200 
 Mindets Magt (see Memory). 
 Moe, Jorgen, poems of, 141, 142, 164 
 Molde, stay at, 235 
 Mollergutten (The Lad of the Mill), 
 
 43 
 Monrad, Prof. M. J., 40 
 Moors, on the {Paa Viddeme), 113 
 Mountaineer, The (BergmanJen), 64 
 Munch, A., 65, 78, III, 141 
 Munich, residence at, 211, 247 
 Musicians {Spillemcend'), 64, 197. 
 
 Nordens Guder of Oehlenschlaeger, 
 
 65 
 
 Norges Daemring (see Twilight of 
 
 Norway, The), 128 
 Norges Skjalde, Til (see Norway 
 
 Bards, To), 43 
 Norma, or a Politician's Love, 64 
 Normans in Constantinople ( Vaerin- 
 
 gerne i Miklagaard), 57 
 Norway, its poets, 141-142 
 Norway, progress of economical 
 
 prosperity in, 149 
 Norway's Bards, To [Til Norges 
 
 Skjalde), 43 
 Norwegian poets non-resident, 129- 
 
 130 
 Norwegian school of acting, 108-109 
 Norwegian Society or Union, III, 
 
 112 
 Norwegian theatre, 109 
 
 Oehlenschl^ger, influence of 
 his writings, 38, 39, 41, 56, 57, 
 65, 68, 98, 100, 107, 108 
 Oersted, H. C, 167 
 Olaf LUjekrans, 92-97, 122 
 
 Om Kjaemfevisen (The Heroic 
 
 Ballad and its Influence), 95 
 Paa Akershus, 197 
 Paa Viddeme (see Moors) 
 Paludan-Miiller, 65 
 Paris Commune, 206, 209 
 Passarge, translator of Peer Gynt 
 
 into German, 170 
 Pedeit Paars, L. Holberg's, 142 
 Peir GyK/,_^, 162-170, 186, 188, 
 '7' 208, 214, 216, 237 
 -People's Foe, The (En Folkefiende\ 
 
 62, 221-225 
 Petersen, N. M., Historical Tales, 
 
 84, 104 
 Picture Gallery, In the (/ Billed- 
 
 galleriet), 124, 197 
 Poem, Ibsen's first, 15 
 Poems, 196 
 Port Said, Ved (At Port Said), 
 
 178 
 
 Recollections of Ibsen, early, 18 
 
 Resignation, 49 
 
 Richter, III 
 
 Rivals for the Throne (Kongsem- 
 nerne), 113, 118, 119, 126, 135, 
 136, 187, 189, 193, 213, 245 
 
 Rome, visits to, 137, 139 
 
 Rosmersholm, 229-235, 239, 243. 
 
 Samfundets Stotter (Pillars of So- 
 ciety, The), 187, 207-211 
 Sancthansnatten (St. John's Eve), 
 
 71, 95 
 
 Sardou, 241 
 
 Sars, Ernst, 113, 119, 122 
 
 Schandorph's Uden Midpunkt, 164 
 
 Schiller, 242 
 
 Schulerud, 58 
 
 Scribe, French dramatist, 68 
 
 Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's 
 
 Dream, 72 
 Skien, residence of Ibsen family, i, 
 
 9, II, 12, 14, 18, 20, 33 
 Skien described by Ibsen, 5 
 Skien, Lammers pastor of, 156 
 Society, An Enemy of [En Folke- 
 
 fiende), 62, 221-225 
 Society, The Pillars of (Samfundets 
 
 Stotter), 187, 207-211 
 
252 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Soiree Billeder (Evening Pictures), 
 
 128 
 Sonnetabet (Loss of the Son), 103 
 Spencer, Herbert, 206 
 Spillemcend (Musicians), 64, 197 
 State government, 206 
 Stocliholm, visits, l8l 
 Strindberg, August, 216 
 St. John's Eve festivities, 1 3 
 St. John's Eve (Sancihansnatten), 
 
 71,95 
 Svanen (The Swan), 65 
 Svend Dynngs Hus of Hertz, 87, 
 
 88, 90 
 Svendsen, Frbken, 194 
 Synnove Solbakken, loi, 107, 130 
 
 Tak (Thanks), 9S 
 
 Terje Viken, 113 
 
 Thanks (r«/6), 98 
 
 Thoresen, Provost, 245 
 
 Thrane, Marcus, 59-60 
 
 Til Norges Skjalde (To Norway's 
 
 Bards), 43 
 Til Saeters (At a Highland Cow- 
 
 House), 40, 71 
 Til Ungarn (To Hungary), 25 
 Trieste, visits, 137 
 Troens Grund {Tiis Basis of Faith), 
 
 200 
 TvivlogHaab (Doubt and Hope), 48 
 Twilight of Norway, The (Norges 
 
 Daemring), 128 
 Tyrol, visits to the, 236 
 
 Udbye the composer, 97 
 
 Unges Forbund, De (see Young 
 
 Men's League) 
 Vaagner, Skandinaver (Awake, 
 
 Scandinavians), 26 
 
 Vaeringerne i Miklagaard (see 
 Normans in Constantinople), 57 
 
 Vasenius, Valfrid, 29, 30, 83, 87 
 
 Ved Tusiiidaarsfesten, 200 
 
 Venstob, Ibsen family estate, 1 5 
 
 Vienna, stay at, 181 
 
 Vienna, speech to students at, 182- 
 85 
 
 Viking age, Ibsen's conception of, 
 56-57, 107 
 
 Vikings in Helgeland, The [Haer- 
 maendene paa Helgeland), 58, 84, 
 85, 100-107, 109, 130, 133, 134, 
 
 193 
 Vildanden (see Wild Duck, The) 
 Vinje, Aasmund Olafson, 53, 60, 
 
 61, 62, 113 
 Volsunga Saga, 102, 104, 105, 
 
 106 
 
 Warrior's Barrow, The {Kjaem- 
 
 pehojen), 55, 56 
 Welhaven, poems of, 42-43, 113, 
 
 128, 141, 142 
 Wergeland, Henrik, loi, 128 
 Wiehe, Wilhelm, III, 194 
 Wild Duck, The ( Vildanden), 16, 
 
 226-229, 242 
 Wild-flowers and Pot-plants {Mark- 
 
 blomster og Potteplanter), 85 
 Wine, My Young, (Minunge Vin), 
 
 197 
 
 Young Men's League or Guild 
 (De Unges Forbund), 5, 14, 114, 
 171-178, 182, 186, 187, 189, 201, 
 246 
 
 Zola, Emile, 241 
 
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 In One Volume, Crown 8vo. 
 
 THE 
 
 LIFE OF HENRIK IBSEN. 
 
 By HENEIK JAEGEE. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY CLARA BELL. 
 
 With the Vekse done into English from the Norwegian 
 Original by EDMUND GOSSE. 
 
 This biography has been translated from the original by Clara 
 Bell, with verse translations of the poetical extracts by Edmund 
 Gosse, who also contributes the critical note which precedes the Life 
 itself. It would not have been possible to find an English editor 
 more after Ibsen's own heart than Mr. Gosse, to whom, together 
 with Mr. William Archer, the Northern dramatist owes his intro- 
 duction into this country ; and the publisher has been fortunate in 
 securing for this, the most complete "Life of Ibsen" yet published 
 in England, the assistance of a writer whose sympathy with his 
 original lends peculiar spirit and vigour to his English version of 
 the poet's lines. 
 
 The Speaker, in noticing the appearance of the biography in the 
 original, wrote as follows : — 
 
 "The existence of so full a biography of a man little more than 
 sixty years of age, and still in perfect health, is a testimony to the 
 regard which is felt for Ibsen in Scandinavia. This bard cannot com- 
 plain that he is not a prophet in his own country. . . . Mr. Jaeger is 
 a careful biographer, and he has arranged and subdivided his material 
 with a great deal of skill. This is matter for gratitude ; for we expect 
 from him not an etude on his author, but particulars of the develop- 
 ment of that author's mind such as are not to be obtained elsewhere. 
 Ibsen has helped him with facts, letters, and notes, and has appa- 
 rently even revised the proofs. The poet is far too sensible to be one 
 of those whose vanity clamours for notice, and yet refuses to give the 
 information desired, trembling with the hope of flattery on the one 
 hand, yet anxious to be able to disclaim having prompted it on the 
 other. That such a book as this should be published in a poet's life- 
 time may surprise us : if it must be published, it is certainly proper 
 that the man who of all others can render it most authoritative should, 
 without aflfectation, preserve it from error. Until this volume was 
 published, various interesting particulars with regard to Ibsen's an- 
 cestry were wholly unknown. It is certainly curious that his gi'eat- 
 grandmother was a Scotchwoman." 
 
 21 BEDFORD STREET, LONDON, W.C. 
 
Mr. William Heinemann's List. 
 
 Now Ready. 
 In One Volume, Small 4to, 23. 6tl. 
 
 THE PASSION PLAY 
 AT OBERAMMERGAU, 1890. 
 
 By F. W. FAKKAR, D.D., F.E.S., 
 
 Archdeacon and Canon of Westniinster, &c. &c. 
 
 " There is no more interesting contribution to the literature of 
 ' The Passion Play ' than that made by Archdeacon Parrar." — John 
 Bvll. 
 
 ** Among the many accounts that have been written this year of 
 ' The Passion Play,' one of the most picturesque, the most interest- 
 ing, and the most reasonable, is this sketch of Archdeacon Parrar's. 
 . . . This little book will be read with delight by those who have, 
 and by those who have not, visited Oberammergau."' — Spectator, 
 
 " The sweet, pure, happy, and deeply religious population of this 
 village entertained an angel when they were the hosts of the Arch- 
 deacon, for surely never was there a more admirable champion." — 
 Sunday Times. 
 
 " A sympathetic, vivid, and impressive description." — Leeds 
 Mercury, 
 
 " Written with that fulness of style for which Archdeacon Parrar 
 is known. It will be acceptable to a large circle." — Manchester 
 Examiner, 
 
 " One of the roost interesting of the literary fruits of the year's 
 performance of ' The Passion Play.' Of the performance itself the 
 Archdeacon offers a thoughtful and analytical criticism." — Evening 
 News and Post, 
 
 " Many guide-books for visitors to ' The Passion Play at Ober- 
 ammergau ' have appeared. Archdeacon Parrar's book of impres- 
 sions will carry more weight than most of them. , . ■ It shows so 
 true an understanding of the subject, and puts the author's impres- 
 sions so simply, clearly, and forcibly as to give the reader of the 
 book as vivid an idea of the play itself as can be had without seeing 
 a performance." — ScotSTnan. 
 
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 Now Beady. 
 
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 By J. M'NEIL WHISTLER. 
 
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 " A work of rare humour, a thing of beauty and a joy^for now and ever.'^ 
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 avec une pointe dont les traits marquent et mordent. , . , C'est un livre — 
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 "It may be said without hesitation, that it is the most complete 
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 Mamchester Examiner and Times. 
 
 "Mr. Ely has collected a great deal of curious and valuable infor- 
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 has formed a highly interesting book. . . . The general influence 
 should be for good on both sides of the Atlantic." — Scotsman. 
 
 "The best work on the subject." — North-Western Presbyterian, 
 
 "The review of the labour organisations in this country from the 
 year 1800 to 1886 is a masterly presentation, and will justify even a 
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 "Every intelligent reader in the country will Arid the book most 
 useful. " — Si. Louis Republican, 
 
 "No one who wishes to understand the problems of labour and 
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 authenticated facts more than theories — a remarkable and timely 
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 HEIN EM ANN'S INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY. 
 
 Edited by EDMUND GOSSE. 
 
 To travel in a foreign country is but to touoli its surface. 
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 HEIN EM ANN'S INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY 
 
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 Now Ready. 
 VOLUME I. 
 
 IN GOD'S WAY. 
 
 By BJORNS-TJERNE BJORNSON. 
 
 Tkanslatbd from the Norwegian by Elizabeth Cakmiohael. 
 
 " The most Important and the most interesting work published 
 during the twelve months by a well-known author. . . . There are 
 descriptions which certainly belong to the best and cleverest things 
 our literature has ever produced. ... It would be difficult to find 
 anything more tender, soft, and refined." — Athenwum. 
 
 VOLUME II. 
 
 PIERRE AND JEAN. 
 
 By guy DE MAUPASSANT. 
 Translated tkom the French by Clara Bell. 
 
 In the Press. 
 
 THE CHIEF JUSTICE. 
 
 By EMIL FRANZOS. 
 Translated from the German by Miles Corbet. 
 
 FANTASY. 
 
 By MATILDE SERAO. 
 
 Translated from the Italian by Henry Harland and 
 Paul Sylvester. 
 
 Other Volumes in preparation. 
 
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 M'ASTER OP THE Magicians. 
 
 A NOVEL. 
 By ELIZABETH STUAET PHELPS 
 
 AND 
 
 HERBEET D. WAED. 
 
 " The Court of Babylon, under NebuchaJuezzar, lins provided ample 
 material for a thrilling story. There is an admirable description of a 
 lion hunt, and other incidents -worthy of Mr. Kider Haggard; but the 
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 reader takes leave of Daniel. . . . The Hebrew prince and prophet is 
 here represented in his youth as full of personal attractions, of great 
 courage and physical dexterity. The purity of his life and the 
 stoicism of his concealed love, only heightened by the pathetically 
 human touch of the last scene, are sufficient reminders that it is the 
 man of God who walks alone and upright through the" dissolute Court 
 of Babylon." — The Athenamm, 
 
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 page in the book. . . . There is throughout the same brilliant style, 
 and the same skilful conduct of the story." — The Christian World. 
 
 " More than merely a readable story. The characters are carefully 
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 to hold the reader's attention."— TAe Glasgow Herald. 
 
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 "One of the best historical novels that American talent has ever 
 produced. Those who read it will be delighted with it." — The Chris- 
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 "A very lively, thrilling novel." — The Oldbe. 
 
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 fervour, animated by exciting incident and hairbreadth escapes." — 
 The Bookseller. 
 
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 THE MOMENT AFTER: 
 
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 PASSION THE PLAYTHING. 
 
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 "This well-written story must be read to be appreciated." — 
 Athenceum. 
 
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 IN THE VALLEY. 
 
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 impossible not to admire its forceful directness, and the colossal 
 grandeur of its leading characters." — Times. 
 
 " It reaches a level to which fiction very rarely attains. . , , We 
 are almost tempted to consider its claims to rank as a prose epic.'' — 
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 "Is distinctly ahead of all the fictional literature of our time, and 
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 tury. " — Scotsman. 
 
 " The book abounds in pages of great force and beauty, and there is 
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 FANTASTIC STORIES. 
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 "This always charming writer has excelled herself in this delightful little 
 volume of fantastic stories. Karely has the most precious possession of a 
 writer, a vivid imagination, been turned to a more admirable literary purpose 
 than in these delicate bits of fantasy. A literary ' gourmet ' will rejoice in 
 these delicate and piquant things." — Pump Court. 
 
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 a fine and impressive idea, and 'Oke of Okehurst' a masterly story." — 
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 In One Volume, Crown 8vo. 3?=. 6d. 
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 VERY STRANGE FAMILY: 
 
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 THE GARDEN'S STORY; 
 
 Or, Pleasures and Trials op an Amateur Gardener. 
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 ARABIC AUTHORS: 
 
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 I NDIA 
 
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 OE THE EMPIRE. 
 
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 ESSAYS. 
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 HEAT AS A FORM OF ENERGY. 
 
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 In One Volume, Crown 8vo, Illustrated, 5s. 
 
 THE PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF 
 GASES. 
 
 By ARTHUR L. KIMBALL, 
 Op the Johns Hopkins Univeksitt. 
 
 Contents. 
 
 I. Introduction. VI. Diffusion and Occlusion. 
 
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 III. Elasticity and Expansion VIII. Avogadro's Land and the 
 
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 IV. Gases and Vapours. IX. GeisslerTuhea and Radiant 
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 with a ohapteb on 
 
 THE ASSAYING OF FUEL, ETC. 
 
 By A. B. GRIFFITHS, Ph.D., F.E.S. (Edin.), P.C.S., 
 
 Mrmbre de jla Soci]St]§ Chimique de Paris, 
 
 formerly director of the metallurgical laboratory, manchester 
 
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 This work gives full details of the assaying and valuation of ores 
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 silver bullion, fuels, &c., and full descriptions are given of the 
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 Ill Two Volumes 8vo. 
 
 THE 
 
 Genesis of the United States. 
 
 A Nakkativb of the Movement in England, 1605-1616, 
 
 Whioh eesulted in the Plantation of 
 
 North Amekioa bt Enolishmen, 
 
 DISCLOSING 
 
 The Contest between England and Spain foe the 
 
 Possession op the Soil now ooohpied by 
 
 THE United States of America. 
 
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 printed, together with a reissue of Rare Contemporaneous Tracts, 
 
 accompanied by Bibliographical Memoranda, Notes, Plans, 
 
 ajid Portraits, and a Comprehensive Biographical Index. 
 
 Collected, Aeeansed, and Edited 
 By ALEXANDER BROWN, 
 Member of the Virginia Historical Society and of the American His- 
 torical Association, Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. 
 
 The crucial period of English occupancy of North America was 
 that included between the return of Weymouth to England in .July 
 1605, and closing with the return of Dale to England in July 1616. 
 This period has hitherto been most imperfectly understood, partly 
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 been followed too implicitly, but chiefly because of the ignorance by 
 later historians, and even by early writers, of the part played by 
 Spain in attempting to thwart the movements of England. 
 
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 secret archives of Spain, of numerous documents throwing light on 
 the contest in Europe for the possession of the American Continent. 
 These documents, with rare tracts of that period (in aU 365 papers, 
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