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Interest in Ibsen as a psychologist can too readily obscure other, equally important, sides of his art. His account of human life is from an acute social and conceptual perspective. Perhaps this is the essence of his art - that which turns it into existential drama exploring many facets of life. This concerns everything he wrote, even prior to his emergence as an international dramatist around Ibsen's work as a writer represents a long poetic contemplation of people's need to live differently than they do.
Thus there is always a deep undercurrent of desperation in his work. Benedetto Croce called these portrayals of people who live in constant expectation and who are consumed by their pursuit of "something else" in life, "a desperate drama". It is precisely this distance between what they can achieve and what they want to achieve that is the cause of the tragic and in many cases the comic aspect of these people's lives.
Ibsen felt that this contradiction between will and real prospects was at the root of his art. Looking back on 25 years of writing in , he declared that most of what he had written involved "the contradiction between ability and aspiration, between will and possibility".
In this conflict he saw "humanity's and the individual's tragedy and comedy simultaneously. These two men, who are reflections of each other, both end up on the brink of an abyss where all they see is life's total emptiness and insignificance.
In Ibsen's 12 modern contemporary plays, from "Pillars of Society" to "When We Dead Awaken" , we are led time and again into the same milieu. His characters' are distinguished by their staunch, well-established bourgeois lives. Nevertheless, their world is threatened and threatening. It turns out that the world is in motion; old values and previous conceptions are adrift. The movement shakes up the life of the individual and jeopardizes the established social order.
Here we see how the process has a psychological as well as a conceptual and social aspect. Yet what starts the whole process is the need for change, something springing forth from the individual's volition. In this sense, Ibsen is a powerful conceptual writer. This does not mean that his main concern as a dramatist was the didactical use of theater, or the waging of an abstract ideological debate. Some of his critics, contemporary and later, have made this accusation - and it's fairly obvious that Ibsen was drawn towards the didactic.
However, the basis of Ibsen's human portrayal is his characters' conceptions of what makes life worth living - their values and their understanding of existence. The concepts they use to describe their position may be unclear; their self-understanding may be intuitive and deficient. A good example of this is Ellida Wangel's description of her ambivalent attraction to the sea in "The Lady from the Sea" But for a long time, in Ellida's consciousness, a desire has grown for a freer life coupled with a need for other moral and social values than those dominating Dr.
Wangel's bourgeois existence. And this discovery within her creates shockwaves on the psychological and the social plane. Ibsen himself has given the best characteristic of his approach to drama. This was as early as in a theater review:.
What we see are human conflicts, and enwrapped in these, deep inside, lay ideas at battle - being defeated, or charged with victory. This undoubtedly touches upon something essential in Ibsen's demands to dramatic art: it should as realistically as possible unify three elements: the psychological, the ideological and the social.
At its best, the organic synthesis of these three elements is at the heart of Ibsen's drama. Interestingly, he considered his major work to be "Emperor and Galilean" , contrary to everyone else. This could indicate how much emphasis he put on ideology, not overt, but as a conflict between opposing views toward life. Ibsen believed that he had created a fully "realistic" rendering of the inner conflict in the abandoned Julian.
The truth is, however, that Julian is too marked by the dramatist's own thoughts - what he calls his "positive philosophy of life. Ibsen took many years, after "Emperor and Galilean" , to orient himself in this direction.
Five years after that great historical dramatization of ideas came "Pillars of Society", the starting point for lbsen's reputation as a European theatrical writer. In , Ibsen sent Nora Helmer out into the world with a demand that a woman too must have the freedom to develop as an adult, independent, and responsible person.
The playwright was now over 50, and had finally been recognized outside of the Nordic countries. We experience the individual in opposition to the majority, society's oppressive authority. Nora puts it this way: "I will have to find out who is right, society or myself". As noted earlier, when the individual intellectually frees himself from traditional ways of thinking, serious conflicts arise.
For a short period around , it appears that Ibsen was relatively optimistic about the individual's chances of succeeding on his own. Although her future is insecure in many ways, Nora seems to have a real chance of finding the freedom and independence she is seeking. Ibsen can be criticized for his somewhat superficial treatment of the problems a divorced woman without means would face in contemporary society. But it was the moral problems that concerned him as a writer, not the practical and economic ones.
In spite of Nora's uncertain future prospects, she has served in a number of countries as a symbol for women fighting for liberation and equality. In this connection, she is the most "international" of lbsen's characters. Yet this is a rather singular success. The middle-class public has enthusiastically applauded a woman who leaves her children and husband, completely breaking off with the most important institution in the bourgeois society - the family!
This points to the basis of Ibsen's international success. He took deep schisms and acute problems that afflicted the bourgeois family and placed them on the stage. On the surface, the middle-class homes gave an impression of success - and appeared to reflect a picture of a healthy and stable society.
But Ibsen dramatizes the hidden conflicts in this society by opening the doors to the private, and secret rooms of the bourgeois homes. These were the aspects of the middle-class life one was not supposed to mention in public, as Pastor Manders wished Mrs. Alving to keep secret her reading and everything else that threatened the atmosphere at Rosenvold in "Ghosts".
In the same manner, the social leaders in "Rosmersholm" put pressure on Rosmer to keep him from telling that he, the priest, had given up the Christian faith. But Ibsen did not remain silent, and the spotlights of his plays made contemporary aspects of life highly visible. He disrupted the peace of the lives of the bourgeoisie by reminding them that they had climbed to their position of social power by mastering quite different ideals than tranquillity, order and stability.
The bourgeoisie had betrayed its own motto of "freedom, equality, and brotherhood", and especially after the revolutionary year they had become defenders of the status quo. There was, of course, a liberal opposition within their class, and Ibsen openly joins these ranks in his first modern contemporary drama. He considered this movement for freedom and progress to be the true "European" point of view. As early as , he wrote to the Danish critic Georg Brandes that it was imperative to return to the ideas of the French revolution, freedom, equality, and brotherhood.
The words need a new meaning in keeping with the times, he claimed. In he writes, again to Brandes:. Eventually, as Ibsen grew older, he had trouble accepting certain extreme forms of liberalism which overemphasized the individual's sovereign right to self-realization and to some extent radically departed from past norms and values.
In "Rosmersholm" , he points out the dangers of radicalism built solely on individual moral norms. It is obvious here that Ibsen is concerned with European culture's basis in a Christian inspired moral tradition. One has to build on this, he indicates, even though one has given up the Christian faith. This is certainly the conclusion that Rebekka West reaches.
Simultaneously, this drama, like "Ghosts" , is a painful clash with the melancholic, killjoy aspects of the Christian bourgeois tradition which subdues the human spirit. Both these works contain, for all their despair, a warm defense of happiness and the joy of life - pitted against the bourgeois society's emphasis on duty, law, and order.
It was in the s that Ibsen oriented himself toward his "European" point of view. Once again, Ibsen had questioned the accepted social practices of the times, surprising his audiences and stirring up debate. Around this time, he returned to Rome. His next work, 's Ghosts, stirred up even more controversy by tackling such topics as incest and venereal disease. The outcry was so strong that the play wasn't performed widely until two years later.
His next work, An Enemy of the People , showed one man in conflict with his community. Some critics say it was Ibsen's response to the backlash he received for Ghosts. Ibsen wrote The Lady From the Sea and then soon headed back to Norway, where he would spend the remainder of his years.
One of his most famous works was to follow, in Hedda Gabler. With Hedda Gabler , Ibsen created one of the theater's most notorious characters.
Hedda, a general's daughter, is a newlywed who has come to loathe her scholarly husband, yet she destroys a former love who stands in her husband's way academically. The character has sometimes been called the female Hamlet, after Shakespeare's famous tragic figure.
In , Ibsen returned to Norway as a literary hero. He may have left as a frustrated artist, but he came back as internationally known playwright. For much of his life, Ibsen had lived an almost reclusive existence. But he seemed to thrive in the spotlight in his later years, becoming a tourist attraction of sorts in Christiania. He also enjoyed the events held in his honor in to mark his seventieth birthday. His later works seem to have a more self-reflective quality with mature lead characters looking back and living with the consequences of their earlier life choices.
And each drama seems to end on a dark note. The first play written after his return to Norway was The Master Builder. The title character encounters a woman from his past who encourages him to make good on a promise.
In When We Dead Awaken , written in , an old sculptor runs into one of his former models and tries to recapture his lost creative spark. It proved to be his final play. In , Ibsen had a series of strokes that left him unable to write. He managed to live for several more years, but he was not fully present during much of this time. Ibsen died on May 23, His last words were "To the contrary! Considered a literary titan at the time of his passing, he received a state funeral from the Norwegian government.
While Ibsen may be gone, his work continues to be performed around the world.
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