That an author does not wholly reveal himself in his works is a
self-evident fact. In some instances his personal traits give a
pretty different impression than his writings. This, however, is by
no means the case with Henrik Ibsen, and that he does not hold the
views referred to as a mere matter of display, or for the benefit of
his books, I am able to show, after an acquaintance of sixteen years'
standing, by sundry trifling incidents.
Let me call attention to certain of his unpremeditated oral
utterances, illustrating the poet's intellectual life, in the form
of a jest, a paradox, or a figure,--but which I do not claim to be
absolutely correct, although they have been preserved in a faithful
remembrance,--and to certain written remarks, communicated with Ibsen's
consent. Thus some of the main outlines of a pen-and-ink sketch of this
author may be attempted in a more faithful and life-like manner than
from his books alone.
In 1870, when France lay maimed and bleeding at the feet of Germany,
Ibsen, whose sympathies were at that time chiefly on the side of
France, was far from sharing the dejection universally experienced in
the Scandinavian countries on account of the sorrowful fact. While all
other friends of France were exhausting themselves in outbursts of
sympathy, Ibsen wrote, Dec. 20, 1870:--
"... Moreover, historic events are claiming a large share of my
thoughts. The old illusory France is all slashed to pieces; and when
the modern matter-of-fact Prussia shall also be cut into fragments,
we shall have made a leap into the midst of a growing epoch. Oh! how
ideas will then come tumbling about our heads. Verily, it is high time
they should do so. All we have had to live upon up to the present date
are crumbs from the revolutionary table of the past century, and even
this fare has been masticated over and over again. These ideas of the
past require new substance, new interpretation. Freedom, equality, and
fraternity are no longer the same things they were in the days of the
guillotine of blessed memory. This is what the politicians will not
understand, and therefore it is I hate them. These people demand only
special revolutions, revolutions in the outside world, in the sphere of
politics. But all this is sheer nonsense. What is really needed is a
revolting of the human spirit...."
No one can fail to discern in this letter the historic optimism I
have indicated in Ibsen. Gloomy though his views may seem, he has
the highest hopes, the greatest confidence in the new life that will
be called into being through misfortune. Aye, still more; only so
long as the misfortunes and calamities which accompany the entrance
of ideas into the world hold the senses awake, does he esteem the
ideas of actual worth. Even the sound of the guillotine's fall, far
from terrifying him, rings harmoniously into his optimistic and
revolutionary contemplation of the world. Not freedom as a dead
condition, but freedom as a struggle, an endeavor, seems to him of
value. Lessing said that if God should offer him truth with his right
and truth-seeking with his left hand, he for one would grasp God's
left hand. Ibsen would undoubtedly subscribe to the proposition if
for "truth" could be substituted the word "freedom" If he despises
politicians, it is because, according to his opinion, they conceive and
treat freedom as something external and soulless.
From Ibsen's optimistic, and, so to speak, pedagogic conception of
suffering, may in a large measure be explained his zeal to have
Norway stand by Denmark in the Schleswig controversy. As a matter of
course, he took for his starting-point, as did other Scandinavians,
the kinship of the two countries, promises given, Denmark's right;
but it was his optimism that led him to view the use of such aid as
subordinate. To the outburst, "You would have had many a beating,"
he once replied, "To be sure, many a one; but what harm would that
have done? We should have been brought into the movement, should have
belonged to Europe. Anything in preference to remaining outside."
At another time--in 1874, I believe--Ibsen was praising Russia in a
high strain. "A magnificent land," said he, smiling. "The oppression
there is truly brilliant."
"How so?"
"Why, think of all the glorious love of freedom it engenders. Russia
is one of the few countries on earth where men still love freedom,
and offer sacrifices to it. That is the reason why the land stands so
high in poetry and in art. Think of the Russians having a poet like
Turgenief! And there are Turgeniefs among their painters, also. We do
not know them, but I saw their paintings at Vienna."
"If all these good things are the result of oppression," said I, "we
may well bestow our praises on it. But how is it with the knout? Are
you enthusiastic about that, too? Suppose you were a Russian, would
you have your little boy (and I pointed to his then half-grown son)
receive stripes from the knout?" Ibsen was silent for a moment, while
his countenance wore an impenetrable look. Then he replied, laughing,
"No, he should not receive stripes, he should inflict them." This
humorous sally is Ibsen through and through. He himself is all the time
inflicting the knout on his contemporaries in his dramas. It is to be
hoped that the eventual infliction of stripes in Russia, by way of
change, might be bestowed on the oppressors.
It need be no matter of surprise that with such views, Henrik Ibsen
was anything but enthusiastic when Rome was taken possession of by the
Italian troops. In moody despondency, he wrote:--
"And so Rome has been taken from us human beings, and given to the
politicians! Where shall we now seek refuge? Rome was the sole spot in
Europe that was consecrated to freedom, the sole spot that enjoyed true
freedom,--that is to say, freedom from political tyranny.... And then
all the beautiful yearning for freedom,--that, too, is gone now. Ah, I
may well say the one thing I love in freedom is the struggle for its
attainment. Its possession does not greatly concern me."
There is, it seems to me, something dual in this standpoint concerning
politics. It is partly a reminiscence of ancient romance, that
antipathy to utilitarianism, which is common to the romantic schools of
all lands, partly something personal and characteristic,--faith in the
power of the individual and inclination for radical dilemmas. The man
who in "Brand" formulated the motto "All or nothing" could never in the
world lend a willing ear to the practical politician's watchword, "A
little step forward each day." I should really like to know if Ibsen's
warm predilection for Russia did not originate in the fact that there
is no parliament in that country. From the depths of his nature Ibsen
abhors parliaments. He believes in the individual, in the single great
personality. A single individual, according to him, can accomplish
everything, and only a single individual. Such a body as a parliament
is in his eyes an assemblage of speakers and dilettanti, which
naturally does not prevent him from cherishing esteem for individual
members of parliaments as such.
It is, therefore, a continual source of amusement to Ibsen when he
reads in a newspaper: "And then a committee was appointed," or, "After
this a club was formed." He sees a symptom of the enervation of modern
times in the fact that as soon as any one has a plan, or a matter
of business of any kind, his first thought is to have a committee
appointed or a club formed for its benefit. Recall the scornful peals
of laughter that resound through "De Unges Forbund" (The Young Men's
Union).
I believe that Ibsen, in the inner recesses of his soul, forces his
individualism to an excess, of which but a faint impression can be
gained from his works. He goes even farther in this particular than
Sören Kierkegaard, of whom in other respects he strongly reminds us.
Ibsen is, for example, a decided opponent of the modern, strait-laced
state idea. Not in the sense that would lead him to favor small states
and narrow communities. No one can cherish a greater horror than
he of the tyranny they exercise, and of the petty tendencies they
lead in their train. Few have been more zealous than he in urging
that the Scandinavian kingdoms should follow the example of Italy
and Germany, and unite in one political whole. His most significant
historic drama, "Kongs-Emneme," (The Pretenders) deals exclusively
with the justification of the idea of a similar union. Ibsen goes so
far in this respect, that he seems to me to overlook the dangers to
the manifoldness and variety of intellectual life this endeavor for
political unity conceals within itself. Italy has never stood higher
in an artistic sense (and generally) than in the days when Siena
and Florence represented two worlds, and Germany never stood higher
intellectually (and generally) than when Königsberg (Kant) and Weimar
(Schiller-Goethe) were centres. Yet in spite of his enthusiasm for
unity, Ibsen's poetic brain dreams of a time when state power will
afford a far greater measure of individual and communal freedom than at
present, when the state, as it now is, will no longer exist. Although
Ibsen reads little, and does not orient himself in the period in which
he lives by means of books, it often seems to me as if he stood in a
sort of secret correspondence with the fermenting, germinating ideas
of the times. Once of late have I received a decided impression that
thoughts which were in their outburst historic, but which were not yet
recognized as such by others, occupied, and at the same time tortured
him. Immediately after the close of the Franco-German war, at a time
when all minds were occupied with it, and when the thought of such
a thing as the commune in Paris had scarcely risen up in a single
Northern brain, Ibsen presented to me as political ideals, conditions
and ideas whose nature did not seem to me quite clear, but which were
unquestionably akin to those that were proclaimed precisely one month
later, in an extremely distorted form, by the Parisian commune. In
reference to our diversity of opinions regarding freedom and politics,
Ibsen wrote to me, Feb. 17, 1871:--
"... The struggle for freedom is to be sure nothing but the perpetual
living appropriation of the idea of freedom. He who possesses freedom
otherwise than as something for which he is striving, has a dead,
soulless possession; for the idea of freedom bears that within itself
which causes it to broaden and expand under appropriation, and if any
one, during the struggle for its attainment, pauses and cries, Now, I
have it,--he proves thereby that he has lost it. Yet it is just this
dead stand-still in a certain grade of freedom that is characteristic
of the body politic, and it is this that I have had occasion to
censure. To be sure, there may be some advantage in the possession
of the right of the ballot and a voice in regard to taxation, etc.,
but whom does it profit? The citizen, not the individual. There is,
however, no rational necessity whatever for the individual to become a
citizen. On the contrary. The state is the curse of the individual. How
is the strength of the state of Prussia purchased? By the absorption
of the individual into the political and geographic idea. The waiter
makes the best soldier. The opposite case may be exemplified by
the Jews, the nobility of the human race. How have they maintained
their individuality in isolation, in poetry, notwithstanding all the
brutality of the outside world? Through the fact that they have had no
state burdens on their shoulders. Had they remained in Palestine, they
would have gone to ruin in their construction long ago, as all other
peoples have done. The state must be abolished. In a revolution that
would bring about so desirable a consummation, I should gladly take
part. Undermine the idea of the commonwealth, set up spontaneity and
spiritual kinship as the sole determining points in a union, and there
will be attained the beginning of a freedom that is of some value.
Changes in the form of government are nothing else than different
degrees of trifling, a little more, or a little less--absurd folly.
The state has its root in time; it will attain its summit in time.
Greater things than it will fall. All existing forms of religion will
pass away. Neither moral conceptions, nor art forms have an eternity
before them. To how much, after all, is it our duty to hold fast?
Who will vouch for me that two and two do not make five on Jupiter?"
Henrik Ibsen was certainly not aware of the ingenuous, yet paradoxical
attempt of the anonymous author "A Barrister," to prove exactly how
two and two might be considered to make five on Jupiter; nor was it
likely that he was aware how vigorously Stuart Mill, and all other
adherents of radical empiricism, would applaud the last-cited lines;
the natural bent of his intellectual powers, however, has led him to
universal scepticism, which, in his case, is so marvellously united
with vigorous, practical faith. In as early a work as his "Brand," he
put into his hero's month the words:--
"No dogma and no church shall ever
Exalted be through my endeavor;
They both have seen their natal day,
'Twould, therefore, but in reason be
That both their final hour should see.
For all that's made must pass away;
It gathers moths, is gnawed by worms,
And must, obeying laws and norms,
Give place to other unborn forms."
The passage cited from his letter affords an energetic commentary
on these words, and may readily be communicated as a proof of the
presentiments of the hidden occurrences of the age, that were the
natural outgrowths of Ibsen's genius, without the least danger of
lowering the poet in the eyes of an honored public, since even Prince
Bismarck has publicly recognized the "grain of sound reason" that was
the kernel of the bewildered efforts of the commune. On May 18, 1871,
Ibsen wrote:--
"Is it not impudent of the commune in Paris to go and destroy my
admirable state theory, or rather no state theory? The idea is now
ruined for a long time to come, and I cannot even set it forth in
verse with any propriety. But it bears within itself a healthy core,
that I see very plainly, and some day it will be practised without any
caricature...."
It is in his maintenance of the sovereignty of the individual, that
Ibsen comes to take a polemic stand in regard to the state idea as well
as to the idea of society. I am not sure that I fully comprehend him
on this point; his mode of thought is foreign to me. I can understand
why there are those, as for instance, Lorenz von Stein, and after
him Gneist, who recognize in the history of modern times a continual
struggle between the state and society and who, proceeding from a new,
energetic comprehension of the state idea, can turn in a polemic way
against society; but I do not thoroughly understand the double front
presented by Ibsen, nor am I quite sure that he is himself conscious
that there is any double front in question.
But his anxiety, lest the sting of personality be dulled and its
choicest treasures laid waste, extends still further. He firmly
believes that the individual must stand alone, must be absolutely free,
if all the fruitful possibilities of its nature are to be developed,
and so his eyes are open to all the hindrances to individual growth
that every association, even friendship, even marriage, bears within
itself. I well remember his answer to a letter written by me in one of
those melancholy moods to which youth so readily gives expression, and
in which I declared, with a little sigh, as it were, that I had few or
no friends. Ibsen wrote, March 6, 1870, as follows:--
"... You say you have no friends at home. So I have long thought. Any
one who like yourself stands in close relation to his life-work, cannot
reasonably expect to retain his friends. Friends are an expensive
luxury, and he who invests his capital in a calling and a mission in
this life has no means left wherewith to maintain friends. The cost of
keeping friends does not consist in what we do for them, but in what we
leave undone out of regard for them. Thereby many intellectual germs
are stunted in their growth. I have experienced this myself, and that
is the reason why I can look back on a number of years, during which I
failed to succeed in becoming myself...."
Is not Ibsen's absolute need of independence and sense of isolation
felt in the words "the cost of keeping friends"; and is there not in
the words cited, the chief explanation of Ibsen's comparatively late
outburst of originality. His career, as I have asserted before, was
apparently begun without any high degree of self-confidence.
As friendship under certain circumstances may be a hindrance to the
independence of the individual, so too may marriage. Therefore it
is that Nora refuses to consider her duties toward her husband and
children as her most sacred duties; for a far more sacred duty she
believes she owes herself. Therefore it is that to Helmer's "You are
before all else a wife and mother"; she replies:--
"I am before all else a human being,--or, at all events, I shall
endeavor to become one."
Ibsen shares with Kierkegaard the conviction that in every single human
being there slumbers the soul of a warrior, an invincible power; but he
cherishes it in another form than Kierkegaard, for whom the worth of
the individual is something supernatural, while with Ibsen, we rest on
human grounds. He believes that the individuality of the human being is
to be preserved for its own sake, not for the sake of higher powers;
and since beyond all else the individual should remain free and whole,
all concessions made to the world represent to Ibsen the foul fiend,
the evil principle.
Here we touch upon the fundamental thought in "Brand." It is embodied
in the passage where Brand speaks of all those scattered fragments of
the soul,--those torsos of the spirit, those heads, those hands, from
which one day a noble whole shall proceed: a hero, in whom the Lord
shall recognize man, His greatest work, His Adam, young and strong.
Thus, "all or nothing" becomes Brand's apparently inhuman motto.
Therefore the "spirit of compromise," even in the hour of his death,
is nothing to Brand but a fair temptress who demands a little finger,
in order to gain possession of the whole hand; and, therefore, the
spirit of compromise returns in "Peer Gynt" as the mighty "Böjgen," the
incarnation of all that is cowardly and pliable in human nature, all
that readily bends and curves.
"Defend thyself!
Böjgen is not mad!
Strike!
Böjgen never strikes!
Fight! Thou shalt!
The mighty Böjgen wins without e'er fighting!
* * * * * * * * *
The mighty Böjgen wins all things through gentleness."
To extricate the race from "Böjgen's" stifling embrace, to capture
the spirit of compromise, force it into a casket and hurl it into the
deepest part of the sea,--this is the goal at which Ibsen, as a poet,
has aimed. This extrication of the individual from compromise, and from
the mighty "Böjgen," is the revolution that is his own.
I once asked Henrik Ibsen, "Is there among all the Danish poets a
single one about whom, in your present stage of development (1871),
you concern yourself in the least." After leaving me for some time
to vain conjectures, he replied: "Once upon a time there was an old
man in Seeland who stood behind his plough in a peasant's smock, and
who had viewed mankind and the world with angry eyes. I rather like
him." Is it not a significant fact that Bredahl is the Danish writer
who of all others is nearest Ibsen's heart? Bredahl, too, was an
indignation pessimist,--no deep-seeing psychologist, it is true, but
a thinker in whose pathos may be found, as it were, the thunder which
precedes Ibsen's lightning. Bredahl sees only the exterior tyranny and
hypocrisy, while Ibsen searches these out in the hidden recesses of
the heart. His standpoint is that of Ibsen's revolutionary orator,--
"He looks after the inundations for the world's meadows."