HENRIK IBSEN

(1828-)

BY WILLIAM H. CARPENTER

ENRIK IBSEN was born March 20th, 1828, at the little village of Skien, in the south of Norway, where his father conducted an extensive business as a general merchant. His ancestors for generations had been shipmasters; and the original Ibsen, the poet's great-great-grandfather, had come to Norway from Denmark. His great-grandmother was of Scotch, his grandmother and mother of German descent; so that in the veins of the poet there is not a drop of pure Norse blood. When the boy was eight years old, business reverses compelled his father to give up the comfortable condition that had hitherto prevailed, and the family moved to a farm just outside the town, where they lived during the succeeding six years in economy and retirement. When Ibsen was fourteen they moved back into Skien, where the boy in the mean time had attended the scientific school. In his sixteenth year he went as an apothecary's apprentice to Grimstad, a village even smaller than Skien, on the southeast coast.

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The following five years that he spent in Grimstad were important ones, not only as a period of unrest and development, but in that within them are found the first visible beginnings of his literary career. His first printed literary work is the poem 'Hösten,' contained in the Christiania Posten in 1849. His first dramatic attempt, the three-act play 'Catilina,' was also written in Grimstad. published in Christiania in 1850, under the pseudonym of Brynjolf Bjarme. It attracted however but little attention, and only some thirty copies were sold; the rest of the edition being subsequently disposed of by the author to a huckster, who used it as wrappingpaper for his wares. This same year Ibsen left Grimstad for Christiania with the intention of entering the University, which he did in a few months by the way of Heltberg's school. His university career, however, was but brief. During the Whitsuntide holidays he wrote the one-act drama 'Kjæmpehöjen' (The Warrior's Mound), which was produced at the Christiania Theatre this same year. After the production of his play, Ibsen abandoned all thought of the University. With several associates he began, early in 1851, the publication of a

weekly paper called Manden (Man), subsequently renamed Andhrimner, the name of the mythical cook of the gods in Walhalla. It had a precarious existence of only nine months, when it was forced to suspend. Ibsen's own contributions were, besides poetry and criticism, a three-act political satire called 'Norma,' which appeared anonymously. In November of this same year, 1851, after living for a year and a half in Christiania, Ibsen was called as stage manager to the newly opened Norwegian theatre in Bergen. The following year he received a meagre traveling stipend and three months' leave of absence, that he might study stage management abroad. In Germany he wrote his next play, 'Sankthansnatten' (St. John's Night), which was produced at the Bergen Theatre in 1853. It was not a success, and has never been printed.

With his next play, however, Ibsen's dramatic career may be said to have fairly and successfully begun. This was the first of the national historical dramas, Gildet paa Solhaug' (The Banquet at Solhaug), 1856; which was produced in Bergen with enthusiastic applause, and was subsequently given in Christiania, Copenhagen, and Stockholm. This same year he also wrote the romantic drama 'Olaf Liljekrans,' which was produced at the Bergen Theatre twice during the following year, but has never been printed. The same year, 1857, he left Bergen to accept the directorship of the Norwegian theatre. in Christiania; a position he held until the summer of 1862, when the theatre became bankrupt and was forced to close. Several plays belong to this period. The historical drama 'Fru Inger til Österaat › (Lady Inger of Österaat), and Hærmaendene paa Helgeland' (The Vikings at Helgeland), appeared in 1857 and 1858 respectively; and 'Kjærlighedens Komedie (The Comedy of Love), a satirical play in rhymed verse, in 1862. To this same period belong also the longest of his minor poems, 'Paa Vidderne' (On the Mountain Plains) and 'Terje Vigen'; published the one in 1860, the other in 1862. From the beginning of 1863 Ibsen received a small stipend as artistic adviser of the Christiania Theatre. He endeavored presently to obtain the "poet's salary," which had been granted to Björnson this year; but the demand was refused, and he was forced to put up with a small traveling stipend, allowed him for the purpose of collecting the popular poetry of Norway. It was afterwards proposed by his friends to procure for him a subordinate position in the custom-house, but this came to naught. When the war broke out between Denmark and Germany, Ibsen beheld with indignation and scorn the attitude of Norway, and he made up his mind to break away from conditions which he felt so belittling. He applied for a traveling stipend, which was ultimately allowed him; and in April 1864, the year of the appearance of 'Kongs-Emnerne' (The Pretenders), his masterpiece

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among the historical dramas, he left Christiania not to return for many years. Abroad, Ibsen lived first in Germany and subsequently in Trieste and Rome. In 1866 he sent back to Norway the great dramatic poem 'Brand'; and the Storthing, on the strength of it, found but little difficulty in granting him the "poet's salary" which had before been refused. For twenty-seven years Ibsen lived abroad, with only occasional visits to Norway; although when he left he had intended to return, and his position as artistic adviser at the Christiania Theatre was for some time kept open for him. From Rome, besides 'Brand,' he sent home in 1867 the dramatic poem 'Peer Gynt.' The next year he removed to Dresden, and the two summers following he made short visits to Stockholm and Copenhagen. His next work, the political comedy De Unges Forbund' (The League of Youth), appeared in 1869; his longest work, the drama 'Kejser og Galilær (Emperor and Galilean), followed in 1873. The year after, 1874, he returned for a short time to Norway after an absence of ten years, and was everywhere received with ovations. Subsequently to this, until his final return to Norway in 1891,- since which time he has lived in Christiania,—Ibsen spent the greater part of the time in Germany, and principally in Munich. These last years have contributed the major part of the fame of the poet outside of Norway; for within them fall all the modern social dramas that are immediately connected with his name, and have even made "Ibsenism" a distinctive characterization in literature. Of these, 'Samfundets Stötter' (The Pillars of Society) appeared in 1877; 'Et Dukkehjem' (A Doll's House), in 1879; Gjengangere' (Ghosts), in 1881; 'En Folkefiende' (An Enemy of the People), in 1882; Vildanden' (The Wild Duck), in 1884; Rosmersholm,' in 1886; 'Fruen fra Havet' (The Lady from the Sea), in 1888; 'Hedda Gabler,' in 1890; 'Bygmester Solness' (Master Builder Solness), in 1892; and finally Lille Eyjolf' (Little Eyjolf), in 1894. To complete the list of his works, a volume of poems had furthermore appeared in 1871, with the title 'Digte' (Poems).

Ibsen's dramas fall naturally, in the light of both subject and chronology, into several groups, which mark with tolerable exactness the successive phases in the development of his art. After the first tragedy, 'Catilina,' which, crude though it is, has in it undoubted. elements of strength,- his work at the outset was romantic. This phase culminated in the lyrical drama in verse, the Banquet at Solhaug'; which was at the same time the first of the plays whose subjects were taken from Norwegian history, that now followed in succession until interrupted by the 'Comedy of Love.' The materials for the Banquet at Solhaug Ibsen found in old Norwegian folksongs and ballads. 'Lady Inger of Österaat,' which later on was almost entirely rewritten, is a tragedy from Norwegian life in the

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sixteenth century. In the Vikings at Helgeland' Ibsen turns for his material to the ancient sagas, several of which are drawn upon for the main plot and incidents. This play marks a definite break, once for all, with Ibsen's youthful romanticisin, which afterward may scarcely be said to reappear. It is however in the last of the historical dramas, the 'Pretenders,' that he reaches his height in this kind of writing. The action of the play falls within the thirteenth century, the "pretenders" being the two claimants to the throne of Sverre, King of Norway,- Hakon and Skule. Ibsen in this drama exhibits an unmistakable dramatic power, and his treatment of the psychological contrast involved in the self-sufficiency of the King and the vacillation of the Duke is among his surest dramatic effects. Some of his critics have seen in Skule the reflection of many of the poet's own traits of character. From a dialogue between Skule and Jatgeir the skald, Ibsen himself has been well called "the poet of doubt," a characterization that particularly fits him as the writer of the social dramas yet to come.

Ibsen meantime, it will be remembered,- before the appearance of the Pretenders,' which had been taken up and then temporarily laid aside,- had written his first distinctly satirical play, the 'Comedy of Love.' This was in several ways a remarkable change in the direction he had been following; but it marks simply a growing maturity of power in his art, and the consciousness already of what was to be its ultimate mode of expression. It was in reality the first definite formulation of what we now know as Ibsenism. In Norway it was received with a storm of protest, such as the subsequent social dramas have not failed to evoke there and elsewhere. The problem of the Comedy of Love,' like that of so many others of Ibsen's dramas, is the marriage relation. Here the theme is the manner in which love must of necessity die out in a union entered into through affection alone. The play is a "defense of the rational marriage as opposed to the marriage of inclination"; and the lovers, Falk and Svanhild, at the end voluntarily renounce each other to escape the common fate.

In Italy, whither Ibsen ultimately went after leaving Norway in 1864, he first took up the studies that were subsequently embodied in 'Emperor and Galilean.' His thoughts, however, seem irresistibly to have gone back to the North upon which he had turned his back in indignation; and this work was laid aside for what to most Norsemen are the greatest of his works, the dramatic poems 'Brand' and 'Peer Gynt.' The two poems, although essentially unlike, mark a distinct phase in the poet's development, in that they belong to what may be called his polemical period. Both are intensely national, and in both he applies unsparingly the scourge to his country's foibles. He rises