When Henrik Ibsen, at thirty-six years of age, left Norway to go into
that exile from which he has not yet returned, it was with a heavy and
embittered heart, after a youth passed on the sunless side of life. He
was born March 20, 1828, in the small Norwegian town of Skien, amid
circumstances of very precarious prosperity. His parents, on their
paternal as well as maternal side, belonged to families of the highest
standing in the town. His father was a merchant, engaged in varied and
extensive activities, and enjoying the exercise of an almost unlimited
hospitality. In 1836, however, the worthy gentleman was compelled to
suspend payments, and from the wreck of his fortunes nothing was saved
for his family but a country estate a short distance from the town.
Thither they removed, and were thus carried beyond the range of the
circles to which they had previously belonged. In "Peer Gynt" Ibsen has
employed the recollections of his own childhood as a sort of model for
his description of life in wealthy Jon Gynt's home. As a lad, Henrik
Ibsen became apprentice in a drug-store. He worked his way through
countless difficulties before he was able, at the age of twenty-two,
to enter on a student's career; even then he had neither inclination
nor means for professional study; for a long time he had not so much
as the means to secure for himself regular meals. His youth was hard
and stem, his daily life a straggle; the paternal roof seems to have
offered him no place of refuge.
Although conditions of this kind signify less in so poor and so
democratic a country as Norway than elsewhere, and although Ibsen
has lacked neither the faculty of youth, nor that of the poet, to
rise superior to actual adversity through enthusiasm for ideas and an
independent dream-life, still, early poverty always leaves its marks
on the character. It may breed humility; it may develop opposition;
it may render the nature wavering, or independent, or hard throughout
life. To Ibsen's reserved, combative, and satirical temperament, which
was far more gifted to occupy the curiosity of the surroundings than to
win their hearts, it must have served as a challenge. It has probably
imparted to him a certain insecurity regarding his social status, a
certain ambition in the direction of those external distinctions that
were calculated to place him on an equal footing with the class from
which in youth he had been cut off, and a powerful sense of being
compelled to depend on himself and his own resources alone.
A nine weeks' activity as publisher of a weekly newspaper without
many subscribers was followed, 1851-57, by a period of labor as
stage-manager of the small theatre in Bergen, and after the last-named
year as director of the Christiania Theatre, which in 1862 went into
bankruptcy. Ibsen, who, as years have gone on, has become so staid and
sedate, and whose days pass with the regularity of clock-work, is said
to have lived a rather irregular life as a young man, and was pursued,
therefore, by that evil report which even some trifling aberration,
especially when caused by the erratic tendency of genius, will call
forth in a small place where all eyes keep watch on each and every
one. I can well imagine Ibsen just entering on manhood, tormented
by creditors, and daily executed in effigy by the followers of the
coffee-party ethics of female gossips. He had written fine poems in
no insignificant number, as well as a series of dramas which are now
celebrated, and some of which belong to his most admired productions,
but which were published in Norway in unsightly editions on wretched
paper, had a sale of only a few hundred copies, and yielded the author,
even on the part of his friends, but a moderately cool recognition of
talent, together with the morally crushing sentence that he "lacked
ideal faith and conviction." He became disgusted with Norway. In
1862, fully equipped with the weapons of polemics and satire, he had
published "Kjærlighedens Komedie" (Love's Comedy), a drama which unites
cutting scorn at the erotic affairs of conventional society, with deep
distrust in the power of love to endure through all the vicissitudes
of life, and profound doubt of its ability to preserve its ideal and
ardent nature unscathed and unchanged in marriage. It could not have
been unknown to the poet that society, with all the tenacity of the
instinct of self-preservation, has made it a duty to have confidence
in the immutability of normal love between man and woman; but he was
young enough, and defiant enough, to justify relatively the most
trivial conceptions of matrimony, as exemplified in the union of
Guldstad and Svanhild, rather than withhold his doubts concerning the
existing dogmatics of love. The book raised a howl of exasperation.
People were indignant at this attack on the amatory relations of
society, betrothals, marriages, etc. Instead of taking home to
themselves his fierce thrusts, they began, as is quite customary in
such cases, to pry into Ibsen's own private life, to investigate
the circumstances of his marriage, and, as Ibsen once remarked to
me, "Though the published criticisms of the comedy might have been
endured, the verbal and private censure was altogether insufferable."
Henrik Ibsen was condemned as a talented _mauvais sujet._ Even so
superb a work as "Kongs-Emneme" (The Pretenders), which followed in
1864, did not suffice to purify and exalt the poet's name. As far as
I am aware, this drama was not actually condemned by the critics, but
it was by no means estimated according to its merits, and it created
no sensation whatever. I do not think twenty copies reached Denmark.
At all events, it was "Brand" that first made the poet's name known
beyond Norway. An essay, in which the works of Ibsen were reviewed by
me in 1867, and which called attention to their rare worth, was the
first presentation of his life as an author given to the public.[1]
To Henrik Ibsen's private reasons for melancholy was added a sense of
profound dissatisfaction with Norway's political attitude during the
Danish-German war. When Norway and Sweden, in 1864, failed to stand by
Denmark against Prussia and Austria, notwithstanding all the promises
given at students' meetings, as well as by a press ostensibly devoted
to Scandinavian interests, and which were understood by Ibsen to be
binding, or at least considered obligatory, home became so odious to
him, as the seat of shallowness, laxity, and pusillanimity, that he
turned his back upon it.
Since that time he has dwelt alternately in Italy, in Dresden, in
Munich, and again in Italy, in each of the German cities five or six
years at a time. But a permanent abiding-place he has not had. He has
led a quiet, orderly family-life, or more accurately speaking, he
has, within the framework of family-life, had his real life in his
work. He has had intercourse in public places with the most eminent
men of foreign cities; has received into his house a multitude of
Scandinavians who happened to be passing through the town where he
was staying; but he has lived as in a tent, amidst hired furniture
which could be returned to its owners any day his departure was fixed
upon; for seventeen years he has not set foot beneath his own table,
or reposed in his own bed. He has never settled anywhere in the
stricter sense of the term; he has accustomed himself to feel at home
in homelessness. When last I visited him he replied to my question, if
nothing in the suite of rooms he occupied belonged to him, by pointing
to a row of paintings on the walls; that was all he could there call
his own. Even now, as a man of means, he feels no desire to own his
own house and home, to say nothing of farming lands and buildings,
the pride of Björnson. He is separated from his people, without any
activity that binds him to an institution, or a party, or even so much
as to a magazine, or to a newspaper at home or abroad--a solitary man.
And in his isolation he writes:--
"My people, who to me from goblet foaming
A wholesome, bitter draught of strength once gave,
That roused the poet, ling'ring near his grave,
To arm himself and labor through the gloaming--
My people, who on me the exile's stave,
With sorrow's scrip and sandals swift for roaming,
Bestowed, the outfit stern for strife completing--
From distant realms I send thee home my greeting!"
Many and important indeed are the greetings he has sent home; but over
all his productions, both before and during his exile, there lingers
one and the same prevailing mood, that of his temperament, a mood
whose main characteristics are freedom from restraint and cheerless
despondency. This fundamental tone, so natural to the homeless,
permeates everything with which he creates the strongest impression.
Recall some of his most characteristic, moreover some of his most
diametrically opposed works, as for instance, the poem "Paa Viddeme"
(On the Mountain Plains), in which the narrator, from the lofty
mountain heights, sees the cottage of his mother surrounded by lurid
flames and his mother burned alive, while he himself, wholly deprived
of willpower and in a state of utter despair, stands watching the
effective illumination, or "Fra Mit Husliv" (From My Household Life),
in which the creations of the poet's fancy, his winged offspring, take
flight as soon as he sees himself in the glass with his leaden eyes,
closely-buttoned vest, and felt shoes; think of the thrilling poetry of
that dismal scene where Brand wrests from his wife their dead child's
clothing; call to mind the scene where Brand consigns his mother to
hell, and that superbly original scene in which Peer Gynt paves the
way to heaven for his mother with lies; conjure up "Liget i Lasten"
(The Corpse in the Cargo), or the overwhelmingly painful impression
aroused by Nora (A Model Home),--that butterfly, which is pricked with
a needle through three acts, only to be pierced at last,--and it will
be felt that the prevailing atmosphere, corresponding to the landscape
background of a painter, in all pathetic parts is fierce, cheerless
gloom. It may rise to a pitch of tragical awe, but that is no proof
that its author is simply a writer of tragedy. Schiller's tragedies,
as well as those of Oehlenschläger, are gloomy only in occasional
situations, and even the author of "King Lear" and of "Macbeth" has
produced such harmoniously moulded creations as "The Tempest" or,
"A Midsummer Night's Dream." With Ibsen, however, this tone is the
fundamental one. It could not be otherwise in the case of a born
idealist who, from the outset of his career, thirsted for beauty in
its highest forms, as purely ideal, spiritual beauty; or, in the
case of a born rigorist who, thoroughly Germanic, especially Norse,
by character and temperament, influenced, moreover, by circumstances
to Christian views, was inclined to esteem the life of the senses
repellent or sinful, and not to admire seriously, or even to recognize
other than moral beauty. In his innermost soul he was shy; that is to
say, but few disappointments were required to make him withdraw into
himself, even with distrust of the surrounding world in his heart.
How early must he not have been wounded, repulsed, humiliated, as it
were, in his original proneness to believe and to admire! His first
deep impression as an intellectual being must have been, I think, an
impression of the rarity--non-existence, he may have added in moments
of bitterness--of moral worth, and disappointed in his quest for
beauty, he found a certain relief in unveiling the sorrowful truth
that lay concealed behind the glamour of appearances. The atmosphere
about him reverberated with words denoting ideals and telling of
eternal love, of profound seriousness, of fidelity, of decision of
character, of Norse patriotic sentiment (the national sentiment of
"det lille, men klippefaste Klippefolk": the little, yet cliff-like,
steadfast mountain-folk); he looked about him, he searched eagerly,
but found nothing in the world of reality corresponding to these
words. Thus there was developed in him, through his very yearning
for an ideal, a peculiar faculty for discovering everything to be
spurious. It became an instinct with him to apply a crucial test to
whatever seemed genuine, and to feel little if any astonishment when
he proved it to be false. It became a passion with him to rap with
his fingers on all that seemed like solid metal, and it gave him a
sense of painful satisfaction to hear the ring of hollowness, which
at the same time offended his ear and corroborated his foreboding.
Whenever he came into contact with what was supposed to be great, it
became both a habit and a necessity with him, to ask as in "Rimbrevet
til en Svensk Dame" (Letter in Rhyme to a Swedish Lady): "Is it truly
great, this greatness?" He became keenly alive to all the egotism, all
the untruthfulness, inherent in imaginative life, to all the wretched
bungling the phrases of freedom and progress may conceal, and gradually
a stupendous ideal or moral distrust became his muse. It inspired him
to ever more and more daring investigations. Nothing overawed, nothing
startled him, either what appeared like idyllic happiness in domestic
life, or what resembled dogmatic security in social life. The more
audacious his investigations, the greater became his dauntless courage
in communicating, disseminating, proclaiming the result. It came to be
his chief intellectual delight to disturb the equanimity, to arouse
the ire of all those whose interest it was to conceal with euphemisms
existing evils. Just as it had always seemed to him that too much was
said about ideals that were never realized in actual life, so too he
felt, with ever increasing certainty and wrathful indignation, that
people, as it were by common consent, maintained silence in regard to
the deepest, most irretrievable breach with ideals, in regard to the
true, unmistakable causes of horror and dismay. In polite society they
were avoided as improbable, or unsuitable to be mentioned; in poetry,
as appalling and gloomy; for æsthetics had once for all banished from
belles-lettres all that was unduly harsh, painful, or irreconcilable.
Thus it was, as nearly as can be defined, that Ibsen became the poet of
haunting gloom, and thence comes his inherent tendency to justify, in
sharp and bitter expressions, his attitude toward the majority.
Henrik Ibsen's personal appearance is suggestive of the qualities
manifested in his poetry. In his countenance the reflection of a soul
full of tenderness, even though disguised by the stem or sarcastic
earnestness of the physiognomy, will occasionally make itself apparent.
Ibsen is below the medium height, is heavily built, dresses with a
certain style and elegance, and has altogether a very distinguished
appearance. His gait is slow, his bearing dignified, his carriage
worthy. His head is large, interesting, framed with a wealth of
grizzled hair, which he wears pretty long. The forehead, which is the
dominating feature of the face, is unusual in form, is high, almost
perpendicular, broad, and at the same time well modelled, and bears the
impress of greatness and marked intellectual vigor. The mouth, when in
repose, is so tightly compressed that there is scarcely any trace of
lips; its closeness and firmness betray the fact that Ibsen is a man
of few words. In truth, it is his wont, when in the society of a large
number of people, to remain as taciturn as though he were the mute,
and at times almost crabbed guardian of the sanctuary of his mind. He
can talk when in the society of one person alone, or in a very small
circle, but even then he is far from communicative. A Frenchman, whom
I once took in Rome to see Runeberg's bust of the poet, said, "The
expression is more _spirituelle_ than poetic." It is very apparent to
the observer that Ibsen is a satiric poet, a brooding thinker, but
not a visionary. His most exquisite poems, however, such as "Borte"
(Absent) and some others, indicate plainly that at some time in the
battle of life a lyric Pegasus has been slain under him.
I am familiar with two expressions in his face. The first is the
one in which his smile,--his kind, delicate smile, penetrates and
animates the mask of his countenance, in which all that is cordial
and heartfelt, all that lies deepest in his soul, rises uppermost.
Ibsen has a certain tendency to embarrassment, as is apt to be the case
with melancholy, serious natures. He has, however, a most charming
smile, and through smile, look, and pressure of the hand, he expresses
much which he neither could, nor would, clothe in words. And he has
a habit, when engaged in conversation, of smiling playfully, with
a twinkle of good-natured raillery, as he tosses off some brief,
not-at-all-good-natured remark, in which the lovable side of his
character is plainly manifested. The smile softens the sharpness of the
outburst.
But I am also familiar with another expression in his countenance,
one in which impatience, anger, righteous indignation, cutting scorn,
impart to it a look of almost cruel austerity, forcibly reminding the
observer of the words in his beautiful old poem Terje Vigen:--
"Yet, sometimes, in stormy weather, a kind
Of madness would kindle his eye;--
And few there were then who could courage find
To come Terje Vigen nigh."
This is the expression his poetic soul has most frequently assumed
before the world.
Ibsen is by nature a polemic, and his first poetic outburst (Catiline)
was at the same time his first declaration of war. From the moment he
arrived at years of maturity--which, by the way, was not very early--he
has never actually doubted that he, the individual, on one scale, and
on the other what is called society--in Ibsen's eyes the embodiment
of those who shun the truth, and who are ever on the alert to conceal
evils with empty phrases--would balance evenly. He is in the habit of
asserting, among many whimsical paradoxes, that in every age there is
a certain sum of intelligence for distribution; in the event of some
individuals being especially well equipped,--as, for instance, Goethe
and Schiller in their day in Germany,--their contemporaries will be all
the more stupid in proportion. Ibsen, I may safely assert, is inclined
to believe that he has received his endowments at a time when there
were very few with whom to divide the sum.
He has, therefore, no consciousness of being the child of a people,
a part of the whole, the leader of a group, a member of society; he
feels himself exclusively a gifted individual, and the sole object in
which he believes, and for which he cherishes respect is personality.
In this emancipation from all natural relations, in this exaltation
of the _ego_ as an intellectual force, there is a lively reminder of
that period in Northern history, in which Ibsen received his culture.
Above all else, the influence of Kierkegaard[2] is apparent. Ibsen's
isolation, however, has a totally different stamp, upon whose moulding
Björnson's quite opposite personality has had no trifling influence. It
is always of vast significance to an individual to be historically so
situated that destiny places at its side a contrasting companion-piece.
Not infrequently it is a misfortune for a noted man to see his name
continually coupled with another, it may be for glorification, it
may be for censure, but always by way of comparison. The compulsory
twin relation that cannot be shaken off may irritate and harm. In the
case of Ibsen, it has, perhaps, aided in forcing the peculiarities
of his nature to their utmost extremities; in other words, it has
intensified his fervor and reserve. No one who, like Ibsen, believes
in the rights and capabilities of the emancipated individual, no one
who, as early in life as he, has placed himself on a war footing with
his surroundings, holds a very flattering opinion of the masses. There
evidently developed within him, on the very threshold of manhood, a
contempt for his fellow-creatures. It was not because he had from the
first an exaggerated opinion of his own talents, or his own worth. His
is a brooding, doubting, questioning nature. He says himself:--
"My calling is to question, not to answer," and minds like his have no
tendency to conceit. It may be noted, too, how long he was in finding
the right language and form with which to clothe his thought; how crude
his first effort "Catiline" was; how strong the evidence displayed in
his unpublished drama "Kjæmpehöjen" (The Barrow), of the influence of
Oehlenschläger, especially of "Landet fundet og forsvundet" (The land
that was found, and that disappeared); how constantly the reader is
reminded, even to the very metre, in the drama "Gildet paa Solhaug"
(The Banquet at Solhaug) of a totally dissimilar genius Henrik Hertz,
especially of the latter's drama, "Svend Dyring's House," and how, in
his "Hærmændene paa Helgeland" (The Warriors of Helgeland), he availed
himself of the effective features of saga literature on a large scale,
before he presumed to take satisfaction in his own resources, and
his own markedly individual style.[3] At the outset of his career he
belonged rather to those natures that enter upon life with profound
reverence, prepared to recognize the superiority of others, until
adversity gives them a consciousness of their own power. From the
moment the discovery is made, however, such natures become, as a
rule, far more rigid and stubborn than those that were originally
self-complacent. They accustom themselves to weigh those whose
superiority formerly they would have accepted as a matter of course,
with the eye as on an invisible scale, and cast them aside the moment
they fall below the standard weight.
Ibsen finds the average mortal petty, egotistic, worthless. His mode
of apprehension is not the purely scientific one of the observer; it
is that of the moralist; and in his quality of moralist he dwells far
more on the wickedness of humanity, than on its blindness and lack of
discretion. To Flaubert mankind is wicked because it is stupid; to
Ibsen, on the contrary, it is stupid because it is wicked. Recall, for
instance, the case of Thorvald Helmer. Throughout the entire drama in
which he plays so sorrowful a rôle, he views his wife with eyes of
utter stupidity,--the hopeless stupidity of a blockhead. In the place
where Nora bids Dr. Rank the last farewell, where thoughts of suicide
are brought face to face with thoughts of death, and the doctor's reply
is couched in terms of sympathizing tenderness, Helmer stands, drunk
and lascivious, his arms outstretched. Yet he is thus stupid solely on
account of his self-righteous egotism.
And simply wrong-doers Ibsen finds mankind, not vicious by nature.
On a previous occasion I quoted an aphorism from Kierkegaard's
"Enten--Eller" (Either--Or), which seems peculiarly well adapted to
be a motto for Ibsen: "Let others lament that the times are evil. I
lament that they are paltry and contemptible, for they are utterly
without passion. The thoughts of mankind are as thin and as feeble
as lace-women. The thoughts of their hearts are too insignificant to
be sinful." What else does Brand say when he bewails the God of his
generation and hold up in contrast his own God, his own ideal, as
follows:--
"And like the race, its God is hoary,
His silv'ry hair its pride and glory.
But this thy God cannot be mine,
For mine is storm, while wind is thine.
* * * * * * * * *
And mine like Hercules is young,
No aged sire as thou hast sung."
What else says the "Knappestöber" (The Button-moulder)? He answers Peer
Gynt about as Mephistopheles, in Heiberg's "En Sjæl efter Döden" (A
Soul After Death), replied to the "soul." Peer Gynt is not destined to
be plunged into the brimstone pit; he is merely to be returned to the
casting-ladle, that he may be moulded over again. He was no sinner,
for, as the text declares, "der skal Kraft og Alvor til en Synd" (it
requires power and earnestness to commit a sin), he belonged to the
mediocre classes, and therefore, he "must be cast into the waste-box to
be moulded over again."
According to Ibsen's conception, Peer Gynt is the typical expression of
the national vices of the Norwegian people. It is very evident the poet
was inspired with less horror than contempt by these vices.
This view of the matter explains even those of Ibsen's youthful works,
in which his characteristics as an author are yet undeveloped. Margit,
in "The Banquet at Solhaug," for instance, cannot help reminding the
reader of the Ragnhild of Hertz. Yet the figure is moulded of quite
different metal from that of Hertz; it is harder, less pliable, more
tenacious. A woman of to-day, whose heart was filled with despairing
love, would feel more akin to Ragnhild than to Margit; for Margit
stands as a token to such a woman that she, the reader, is the child
of an enfeebled age, devoid of either the courage or the consequence
of passion, lost in half-measures. And wherefore does Ibsen, in
his "Warriors of Helgeland," reach back to the wild tragedy, the
magnificent horror, of the "Volsunga Saga"? In order that he may
present this picture of the past to the contemplation of the present,
in order to awe, in order to reproach the generation of to-day,
by showing it the grandeur of its forefathers,--that passionate
intensity which once unbridled, rushed madly onward toward its goal,
looking neither to the right nor to the left, regardless of all minor
considerations; that pride and strength which is chary of words, which
silently acts, silently suffers, silently dies; those wills of iron;
those hearts of gold; those deeds which a thousand years have not
buried in oblivion. Aye, behold yourselves in the mirror!
Take this combative pathos in its first outburst,--it is his "Catiline"
conceived with the entire sympathy of an enthusiastic university
student. Catiline despises and hates the Roman social life, in which
violence and selfishness hold sway; where men become rulers through
intrigue and strategy; and he, the single individual, rebels against
society. Take this combative pathos in one of Ibsen's later works,
in the most admirable of his dramas, "Et Dukkehjem" (A Model Home),
where it rings with a subdued, but none the less penetrating tone from
female lips. Where Nora, the singing-bird, the squirrel, the child,
finally collects herself and says, "I must try to find out which is
right: society, or myself"; where this frail creature dares place
herself on one side and all society on the other, we feel plainly that
she is a true daughter of Ibsen. Take, finally, the pathos, so filled
with thirst for battle, in a later work, "Gjengangere" (Apparitions),
in Mrs. Alving's words concerning the teachings of modern official
society, as follows: "I only intended to meddle with a single knot, but
when that was untied, everything fell to pieces. And then I became
aware that I was handling machine sewing." In these words, remote
though the poet may be from the heroine of the play, may be heard a
sigh of relief, that for once, if only indirectly, utterance has been
given to the utmost that could be said.
With Catiline and with Mrs. Alving,--Ibsen's first male and last
prominent female creation,--there is the same sense of isolation as
in the intermediate characters, Falk, Brand, and Nora, and the same
despairing beating of the head against a stone wall. In his drama "En
Folkefiende" (An Enemy of the People), the entire plot revolves about
the one idea of how much strength there lies in isolation, and the play
ends with the didactically expressed paradox,--"The fact is, you see,
the strongest man in the world is he who stands absolutely alone."
The current name in modern Europe for this mode of regarding the world
and humanity is pessimism. There are, however, many kinds and degrees
of pessimism. It may be, as with Schopenhauer and von Hartmann, a
grave conviction that life itself is an evil, that the sum of joys
is overwhelmingly insignificant in comparison with the sum of griefs
and torments a human life contains; it may content itself by proving
the worthlessness of life's highest good, showing how melancholy is
youth, how joyless labor, how empty pleasure is in itself, and how
repetition dulls our satisfaction in it. By virtue of this insight, it
may either recommend self-denial, as did Schopenhauer, or labor for the
advancement of civilization as does Hartmann, yet with the unwavering
conviction that every advance in civilization bears with it increasing
unhappiness for the human race. Such pessimism is not that of Ibsen. He
too finds the world base, but the question whether life is a good does
not occupy him. His entire mode of contemplation is moral.
The pessimistic philosopher is prone to linger on the illusory nature
of love; he demonstrates how small an amount of happiness it affords;
how it rests mainly on a delusion, as its true goal is not the
happiness of the individual, but the greatest possible perfection of
the coming generation. To Ibsen, the comedy of love does not consist in
the unavoidable erotic illusion,--this alone is in his eyes uplifted
above the province of comedy and has his full sympathy,--but in the
deterioration of character, the abandonment of life ideals, that is the
result of conventional engagements and marriages, even though based
originally on love. That the young theologian, with his preparation for
a missionary's career, should be transformed on his betrothal into an
instructor in a young ladies' seminary, is an occasion for satire to
Ibsen, is the true comedy of love in his eyes. In a single instance,
and then but as though illumined by a passing flash of light, has
he risen far above his usual moral conception of the erotic sphere,
without, therefore, renouncing the satirical standpoint, and that is in
the poem "Forviklinger" (Entanglements), the wittiest, as well as the
most profound of all Ibsen's poems.
The pessimistic philosopher is prone to dwell on the thought that
happiness is as unattainable for the individual as for the masses. He
lays great stress on the fact that enjoyment slips through our fingers,
that all our heart's desires are attained too late, and that when we
have them within our grasp they are far from producing the effect upon
us our craving for them had deluded us into anticipating. In such an
utterance as the well-known remark of Goethe that in seventy-five years
he had not enjoyed four weeks of actual pleasure, but had ever been
compelled to roll a stone which must continually be raised and started
afresh, he sees the decisive proof of the impossibility of happiness.
For what the favorite of gods and men, Goethe, failed to obtain, is
not likely to be gained by any ordinary mortal. This is not so with
Ibsen. Sceptical as he may otherwise be, he by no means doubts the
possibility of happiness. Even Mrs. Alving, hard-pressed as she was
by circumstances, believes that under other conditions she might have
been happy; aye, is truly of the opinion that even her wretched husband
might have been prosperous. And Ibsen apparently shares her opinion.
Her words about the "half great city," which has no joy to offer, only
pleasures; no life vocation, only an office; no actual work, only
business affairs, are spoken from his own heart. Life itself does not
seem an evil to him. Existence itself is not joyless. Nay, some one is
to blame, or rather many are guilty when a life is shorn of joy; and
he points to the dreary, conventional society in Norway, rude in its
pleasures, bigoted in its conceptions of duty, as the sole object of
censure.
To the pessimistic philosopher, optimism is a sort of materialism.
In the fact that optimism is preached at every corner, he sees the
cause of the social question threatening to become a firebrand to the
whole world. According to his conception, the most important thing
is to teach the masses they need expect nothing from the future; the
pessimistic recognition of universal suffering alone can explain to
them the fruitlessness of their efforts. This mode of contemplation
is never found in Ibsen. Where he touches the social question, as in
"Samfundets Stötter" (The Pillars of Society), and elsewhere, the evil
designated is always of a moral nature. Every injury sustained is
dependent on a wrong committed. It is the entire stratum of society
that is rotten, whole rows of pillars of society that are decaying
and hollow. The stifling air of a small community is bad; in large
communities there is room for "great deeds." A breath from the outside
world, that is to say, a breath of the spirit of truth and freedom, can
purify the atmosphere.
Thus it is that when Ibsen finds the world bad he feels no compassion
for mankind, only indignation at it. His pessimism is not of a
metaphysical but of a moral nature; it has its roots in a conviction of
the possibility of the realization of the ideal; it is, in a word, an
indignation-pessimism. And his lack of sympathy with many sufferings
is dependent on his firm belief in the educating power of suffering.
These petty, narrow human beings can only become large through
suffering. These small, wretched communities can only become healthy
through struggles, defeats, castigations. He who has himself felt how
mightily a human being may be equipped by adversity, he who has himself
drained the health-giving, tonic draught of bitterness, believes in
the use of pain, of adversity, and of oppression. This is perhaps most
plainly visible in his "Kejser og Galilæer" (Emperor and Galilean). His
conception of Julian is that of a man who, through his persecution of
his Christian subjects, becomes the actual framer of the Christianity
of his time; that is to say, its resuscitator from the dead. Julian's
universal historical significance for Ibsen is this: by transforming
Christianity from a court and state religion to a persecuted and
oppressed belief, he restored to it its original spiritual character
and its primitive martyrdom. Challenged by the Christians, Julian
punishes with severity; but the result of his persecutions is one
he himself has little anticipated. The old comrades of his student
days, that Gregor who lacked courage for any decisive act, but who
had "his little circle, his kinsfolk to protect," and who had neither
powder nor ability to effect more, and that Basilios who "sought for
worldly wisdom in his country estate,"--both rise up, strengthened by
persecution, like lions, against him.