"He takes delight in placing torpedoes under the ark."
If, then, I have designated Ibsen as a revolutionary nature, I need
scarcely defend myself from the charge of having declared his to
be one of those natures that are enthusiastic for violent exterior
convulsions. Far from it! Indeed, quite the contrary! For, isolated
as he is and feels himself to be, reluctantly opposed to all parties,
simply as parties, stately, polished, reserved, "awaiting the approach
of time in a spotless wedding garment," he is, so far as exteriors
are concerned, strictly conservative, although his conservatism is of
a peculiar nature; that is, it proceeds from radicalism, because he
expects nothing from special reforms. In the depths of his soul he is a
decided revolutionist, but the revolution he raves about and labors for
is the purely spiritual one I have pictured. The reader will not have
overlooked the concluding words of the letter of December, 1870, "What
is really needed is a revolting of the human spirit." I have never been
able to forget these words; for they contain, in a measure, Ibsen's
entire poetic programme--an admirable programme for a poet.
I should, however, fail to be true to myself if I said that Ibsen's
view of life seemed to me to possess more than a powerful element
of truth. It is a view of life by virtue of which one may think
and produce poetic creations, but not act, which, indeed, strictly
considered, cannot even be put into plain language in the world, as
it is, because it is calculated to instigate others to action, which
in this instance means--capital offence. Whoever, through a yearning
for great, decisive, sweeping overthrows, is led to look indifferently
or contemptuously on the slow, insignificant changes of the natural
course of development; on the tardy, gradual, petty improvements, the
compromises, with which the practical worker must be content, because
through them alone he can hope to attain the partial realization of
his ideal; on the associations without which it is impossible for any
one who is not in a position of brutal command to transmit a single
thought into the reality of life,--such a man must relinquish all hopes
of raising a finger in practical life. Like Sören Kierkegaard, like
Brand, he can do nothing but point helplessly at the yawning gulf that
separates existing reality from the ideal. To attempt to act himself
or induce others to act in harmony with the desired goal, would simply
mean to lead his followers headlong over the brink of that dizzy abyss
which parts what exists from what is desired, and to expose himself
to immediate arrest. Indeed, even the poet can only express so ideal
a view of life indirectly, insinuatingly, ambiguously, in the drama;
only through thoroughly responsible personages, and thus with a certain
reservation, so far as the author himself is concerned. Only the rudest
kind of opponents could possibly have taken the hideous jest about the
torpedoes beneath the ark for literal, bloodthirsty earnest. This mode
of contemplating life involves and necessitates, therefore, a dualism
between the theoretic and the practical, between the individual and the
citizen, between spiritual freedom and that practical freedom which has
the form of an obligation, a dualism that in actual life can only be
carried out by a dramatic poet who lives in exile, who is not obliged
to have the slightest dealings with state, society, politics, groups of
human beings, parties, or reforms.
Therefore the ideal of intellectual reserve that has its origin in
this mode of contemplating life seems not to me the highest. To be
sure, a distinguished author provides best for his outward dignity
when he is never found in a skirmish or amid an excited throng. It
is unquestionably aristocratic to hold one's self aloof from the
vulgar crowd, never to mingle in the turmoil of the day, never to
write a newspaper article. Yet to my taste it savors of a still
higher aristocracy to act as did the legitimist generals who reported
themselves as simple soldiers in Condé's army, and who, notwithstanding
their general's epaulettes, did not disdain to fight now and then on
foot and in the first rank. Not one whit of true inner dignity is
sacrificed by such a course.