The psychological analysis has now reached a point from which we can
view this poetic mind in the light of the literary consciousness and
endeavors of its contemporaries. I say expressly contemporaries,
not people; for Ibsen is as strongly marked a European character as
Björnson, notwithstanding his cosmopolitan culture, is national. A
poet's attitude in regard to the consciousness of his contemporaries
is indicative of his relation to the ideas and forms of his age. Every
period has its own peculiar ideas, which in art appear in the shape of
themes and ideals.
Ideas are not begotten by poets. They emerge from the labors
of thinkers and inquirers; they come forward as large, genial
presentiments of the laws and relations of realities; they develop and
take form amid scientific investigations, amid historic or philosophic
inquiries; they grow, become purified and strengthened through
struggles for and against their truth, until, like the angels of the
Bible, they become powers, thrones, kingdoms, and reign over the epoch.
Poets do not beget ideas; it is neither their vocation nor their
business to do so. Genuine poets, however, become overwhelmed with
ideas while these are still growing and struggling, and take their
stand in the great conflict of the age at the side of these ideas. They
are transported by them, nor can they do otherwise; they comprehend,
and yet have never learned. Mediocre poets, those who possess no poetic
quality unless it may be a transmitted or an acquired routine, have no
ear for the hollow rumbling of ideas as they penetrate the subterranean
passages of the earth, no ear for their pinion-beats in the air. In
the preface to his "Neue Gedichte," Heine states that while engaged
in writing these poems it seemed to him as though he could hear the
flutter of a bird's wings above his head. "When I related this to
my friends, the young Berlin poets," he continues, "they exchanged
significant glances, and unanimously assured me that nothing of the
kind had ever come within their experience." This whizzing sound, which
the Berlin poets had never heard, was nothing in the world but the
pinion-beat of those ideas.
Wholly without ideas, however, it is impossible for a poet to create.
Even bad poets have at their command ideas, viz., those of the past;
and these ideas that were invested by the masters of an earlier period
with distinctly marked poetic expressions are reproduced by them in a
feeble, ineffective way. The ideas of the age, as a rule, appear to
them thoroughly "unpoetic." To evolve poetry from these ideas seems
to them utterly impossible. But the poet who in his youth (in "The
Pretenders") wrote the memorable sentence, "For you it is impossible;
all you can do is to repeat the old story; but for me it is as easy
as it is for the falcon to cleave the skies," could never have been
permanently alarmed by the thoughts of his day. He has invested many
new ideas with flesh and blood, and in thus incarnating them has aided
in their dissemination; he has, moreover, given breadth and depth to
many contemporary ideas by watering them from the well-springs of his
own emotional nature. How profoundly he has felt the necessity of a
vital relation to the germinating ideas about him may be conjectured
from the superb lament of the balls of yam, withered leaves, and broken
straws, to Peer Gynt:--
"Thoughts are we,
Thou shouldst have thought us.
* * * * * * *
"We'd soar aloft
As songs consoling,
Yet here as balls
Of yarn we're rolling.
"We are a watchword,
Thou shouldst have proclaimed us;
See how indifference
Hath seized and shamed us.
"We are duties,
Thou hast neglected us.
Doubts and hesitations
Have maimed and dejected us."
Words of reproach these are by which we may well fancy that the poet
has been incited to action in periods of laxity, but which it is
impossible to conceive of in the form of a Peer Gynt self-accusation.
How in the world could poor Peer have given himself a watchword?
How could he reproach himself with not having proclaimed it? Let
us now see what topics and ideals are especially uppermost in the
consciousness of the age. They may be divided, it seems to me, into the
following groups:--
First, such ideals and topics as stand in direct relation to religion;
that is to say, the reverential relation of men to ideas which in their
eyes are powers,--to some outward, to some inward powers--especially
those ideals and topics that have a bearing on the conflict between
individuals who deem these powers outward and those who deem them
inward realities.
Second, those topics and ideals that revolve about distinctions between
two ages, past and future, ancient and modern, old and new, especially
regarding distinctions and conflicts between two generations.
Next, those that have a bearing on the grades of society and their
struggle for existence, on class distinctions,--especially those
between rich and poor,--social influence, and social dependence.
Finally, a whole group of topics and ideals that revolve about
distinctions between the two sexes, about the mutual erotic and social
relation of man and woman, especially about woman's economical, moral,
and spiritual emancipation.
Religious topics and problems are dealt with in our day in the most
diverse ways, although always in the modern spirit. Allow some of the
principal instances to pass in review before your mind. The greatest of
the elder generation of poets in France, Victor Hugo, notwithstanding
his passionate tendency to free thought, displays the remnants of a
vague deism, colored with pantheism. Traces of the influence of the
past century may readily be detected in him: religion is glorified at
the cost of religions; love which unites is extolled in opposition to
faith which parts and destroys. Most of the prominent authors of the
present generation, as for instance Flaubert, represent religion with
scientific coldness, but always from the dark side. To him, and to
his spiritual kindred, the object of religion is a hallucination, in
which one believes. The greatest English poet of our day, Swinburne,
is a passionate heathen with a rich poetic vein, and he conceives
Christianity to be a denial of nature, the enemy with whom he must
do combat. In Italy, the greatest poet of the land, Leopardi, became
absorbed in a sort of sublime metaphysical pessimism, which found
vent in stoic resignation. Carducci, the foremost of Italy's living
poetic thinkers, is quite as modern and even more polemic than he. In
Germany, the most prominent poets, as Gottfried Keller, Paul Heyse,
Fr. Spielhagen, have displayed in their works a soul-felt atheistic
humanitarianism.
In the North the conditions were totally different. The Danish poets
of the past generation had almost invariably paid homage to orthodoxy;
the only philosophically inclined one among them, J. L. Heiberg, who
had begun by protesting as a free thinker, ended by making at least
apparent concessions to the teachings of the clergy; and the attempt in
Denmark to undermine the authority of the church, namely, Kierkegaard's
violent attack on the state church, had not been aimed at the truth of
the dogmas taught, but exclusively at their professors, especially in
cases where the lives of the priests failed to correspond with their
teachings. This attitude of Kierkegaard has been a decisive one for
Danish-Norwegian polite literature, down to the present day. Modern
poetry in Denmark and Norway has rarely, if ever, touched the objective
side of the question, the essence of religion, but almost exclusively
its subjective side; hence the extraordinary wealth of priestly forms
in this literature, both before and after its authors were emancipated
from orthodoxy. The priests in Björnson's and in Magdalene Thoresen's
peasant stories denote the standpoint before emancipation, the priests
in Björnson's, Schandorph's, Kielland's, Ibsen's, Gjellerup's latest
works the standpoint after emancipation.
Ibsen follows the clue given by Kierkegaard. Like all men of his
generation in the North, who have grown up in the period of romance,
his early relations to religion lack clearness. Moreover, there was
in his nature a dual tendency, which must necessarily expose him
to inner tumults: a native propensity to mysticism and an equally
inbred inclination to sharp, dry common sense. Few poets who are
capable of such almost convulsive flights of fancy as he, are able
to linger as calmly as he can amid the prose of life. "Brand" and
"Samfundets Stötter" (The Pillars of Society) differ as widely in main
essentials as though written by different authors. The character of
the first-named work is that of pure, unqualified mysticism, the other
revolves about simple, unadulterated prose. Here boundless exultation;
there good, wholesome, social morality.
No one who is familiar with the mental characteristics of the Norsemen
can doubt that "Brand," which laid the foundation for Ibsen's poetic
fame, excited universal attention merely because it was regarded as a
sort of poetic sermon, a homily, a devotional work. It was not the real
merits of the book that made it seem imposing to the public and caused
the sale of so many editions; no, people streamed into the bookstores
to purchase "Brand" precisely as people pour into church when a new and
severely zealous priest appears. In a correspondence that Ibsen carried
on with me regarding this book, he expressly stated that Brand's
ministerial career was the purely exterior, incidental side of the
question. In a letter, dated June 26, 1869, he writes:--
"Brand has been misunderstood, so far, at least, as my intention was
concerned. The misconception is unquestionably rooted in the fact that
Brand is a priest, and that the problem of the work is placed in the
realm of religion. It would have been just as possible for me to apply
the same syllogism to a sculptor, or a politician, as to a priest. I
could just as well have given vent to the mood that impelled me to
literary production, had I, instead of Brand, for instance, dealt with
Galileo (with the trifling alteration in the latter's history, that he
must, as a matter of course, remain firm and not concede that the earth
stood still). Indeed, who knows, had I been born a hundred years later,
I might with equal relish have treated yourself and your struggle with
Rasmus Nielsen's philosophy of compromise. Taken as a whole, there is
much more objectivity in Brand than has hitherto been discovered, and
of this, as a poet, I am proud."
Although it is my wont carefully to withhold everything of a personal
nature from these quotations, I have here permitted myself to retain
a playful allusion to the literary warfare of those days, because
it proves how little the mere idea of priesthood concerned Ibsen.
A further proof of this is afforded by an expression in one of the
letters I received from Ibsen during the time when I was brooding over
the introduction to my book "Hovedströmninger i det 19de. Aarhundredes
Litteratur" (The Main Currents of the Literature of the 19th Century).
It reads as follows:--
"It seems to me you have reached the same crisis which I had attained
in the days when I was about to write Brand, and I am convinced that
you, too, will know how to find the healing drug that can expel disease
from your body. In energetic production lies an admirable cure."
As the reader will see for himself, the emphasis in "Brand" is
placed, according to the poet's own construction, upon the power
of self-sacrifice and strength of character, not upon any special
religious dogma. Now although Ibsen is, of course, the best, the
only competent judge of his own design in the work, he nevertheless
underrates, in my estimation, the weight of the unconscious power by
which he was impelled to choose the precise materials he has chosen
and no others. And this unconscious power, as I believe, was Ibsen's
Norse-romantic tendency to mysticism. Yet even if "Brand" should be
understood exactly in accordance with Ibsen's own interpretation of the
character, the resemblance to religious phenomena in Northern religious
life is equally obvious. It might look to the Danes as though Ibsen had
Kierkegaard especially _in mente_; for he, too, laid the entire stress
on personal sincerity. This would be due to our unfamiliarity with
Ibsen's Norwegian models. Independent priests of Norway, Lammers, for
instance, have had a larger share in the formation of the character of
"Brand" than any direct influence from Denmark. Lammers, however, was
himself led to the stand he took by the Kierkegaard agitation.
In "Kejser og Galilæer" (Emperor and Galilean), the influence of the
Kierkegaard standpoint, although still strong, is on the wane. True,
the passion for martyrdom is here set up as a measure for truth,
and the psychological principle of the work is that no doctrine has
intrinsic worth that is incapable of inspiring a spirit of martyrdom;
but with this there is united a determinism that is half-mystic,
half-moulded in the modern spirit; moreover, a Schopenhauer-like faith
in the unconscious and irresistible world-will; finally, a modern
prophecy that Christianity, as well as paganism, will one day be
resolved into a third kingdom which will be an amalgamation of the two.
It is characteristic of Ibsen's intellectual _habitus_ that in both of
his attempts at dealing with religious themes everything that savors
of conflict and endeavor is infinitely more prominent and successful
than portions touching on reconciliation and harmony. "The Third
Kingdom" in his "Emperor and Galilean," stands quite as obscurely in
the background as that _Deus caritatis_ at the conclusion of "Brand."
Themes that revolve about the relations between two successive ages or
generations, or simply about the relations between different stages of
life, which in Russia, Germany, Denmark, and Norway have been treated
in so many different ways, have also occupied Ibsen, during his first
period in "Kongs Emnerne" (The Pretenders), during the transition to
his second period in "De Unges Forbund" (The Young Men's Union). Both
these dramas are remarkable works, but the strength of neither lies in
historic insight or historic impartiality.
"The Pretenders" is not really an historic drama; it displays no design
on the part of its author to produce, through a series of pictures
of the past, a portrayal of human nature as it appears under certain
conditions at a defined period. The poet did not proceed from an
historic standpoint; he simply used the historic as a pretext. The
background of the play is mediæval, the foreground modern, for Skule
Jarl is a modern figure. An historic construction would have led to the
presentation of Skule as a full-blooded aristocrat, and Bishop Nicolas
as a fanatical, yet thoroughly devoted and conscientious clergyman.
Skule's conflict with Haakon denotes historically the last unsuccessful
attempt of the aristocracy to limit the power of the king; and the
bishop's conflict indicates that hatred, which was so well justified
from a priestly point of view, against the enemy of the church and
usurper Sverre and his race. Instead, Ibsen has transformed Nicolas
into a monster, who symbolizes bigotry, envy, and dissension in Norway
through long ages, and Skule into an ambitious person who, while
striving to attain the highest goal, is at the same time tormented
with a wretched doubt of his right and ability to reach it. Haakon
and Skule are contrasted as representatives of two epochs,--the age
of dissension and the age of union. But, as the poet's interest in
the psychological is so much greater than his sense of the historic
element, this contrast is thrust into the background by the contrast
between the individual characters and their relation to ideas. Haakon
represents "the king's thought," which he himself first conceived,
and is wholly submerged in this relation. Skule represents no ancient
historic idea, but simply lack of self-confidence. He steals Haakon's
"king's thought" in order to procure for himself through it a right
to the throne. He does not succeed. The skald declares to him that he
cannot live for the life-work of another, and he himself recognizes
the truth of this. The skald's thought is not expressed with any too
great lucidity; for why could not a man live for the ideas of another,
if he has himself endeavored to appreciate and transform them into his
own flesh and blood, without stealing them, and causing them to pass
for his own discovery? The theft, not the fact of living for the ideas
of others, would make a person unhappy; and this it is which causes
the unhappiness of Skule. The fact is, however, that Ibsen, with the
whole intensity of his nature, interests himself more in the struggle
that is taking place in the soul of the individual than in any struggle
between historic powers. What attracted him to Skule, and made the
latter the main personage of the play, was the "interesting" element in
the character of Skule,--his complex nature, his struggling soul, which
even when in the wrong eclipsed that of the simple-hearted Haakon with
his certainty of coming victory. It is the despairing power in the
great Nureddin which, in spite of his craving for the lamp, in spite
of the theft of the lamp, is doomed to ruin. It is the representation
of a soul whose aspiration is greater than its ability to rise; and
this same representation it is that is varied in Bishop Nicolas, whose
gigantic powers are wrecked in partly physical, partly spiritual, but
wholly powerless yearning and craving. It is the relation between the
ability and the desire, between the will and the possibility, in the
soul of the individual, this relation which is already indicated in
Catiline and in Gunnar in "The Warriors of Helgeland," which is brought
forward anew in the relation of Skule to Haakon's thought. Skule stands
in the same relation to the "king's thought" as Julian to Christianity.
Filled with a foreboding of the greatness of the power he is combating,
he holds an irreconcilably distorted relation to the great, victorious
idea. The psychological interest completely routs the historic.
The relation between two succeeding generations is again represented
in "The Young Men's Union," a drama which furnishes in an extremely
witty manner a parody on the efforts of the younger generation, without
at the same time offering any justification for these efforts. This
work cannot be compared with such works as Turgenief's "Fathers and
Sons," or "Virgin Soil," which unite relentless severity against the
elder generation with their stem judgments on the younger, and at the
same time extend to both thorough sympathy and comprehension. Ibsen's
pessimism has repelled his sympathy. The sole honorable representative
of the younger generation in the play last mentioned is Dr. Fjeldbo,
a man of a thoroughly passive nature. That he is a physician is
scarcely a matter of pure accident. The skilful physician plays, on
the whole, a striking rôle in modern poetry; he is evidently the hero
of the day. The cause of this is, doubtless, that he can be used
as the incarnation of the ideals of the age, those strictly modern
ideals, which are in respect to theory science, with its relationship
to the true and the false, in respect to practice humanity, with its
relationship to happiness and suffering, the opposing psychologic and
social forces that claim the attention of the age.
In the dramas of Schiller, as well as in those of modern Germany, the
struggle for political and spiritual freedom plays a prominent rôle.
Class distinctions, too, are a favorite theme in various German dramas
of an earlier period, even though it had not then become customary
for poetry to deal with what is called at the present time the social
problem. A glimmer of the latter appeared much earlier in the French
drama, from the days of Beaumarchais to those of Victor Hugo, as this
question had become a burning one in public discussion in France far
earlier than elsewhere. In the polite literature of our day, the
social question has gradually banished the political from its high
seat. Modern poetry, in many lands, is inspired by sympathy with the
poor and lowly; it reminds those who are well placed in life of their
duties. The question is not one of those that have chiefly occupied
Ibsen, and yet he has touched upon it. When he wrote "Catiline," he
was too undeveloped to comprehend the social problem aright; but many
years later, in "Samfundets Stötter" (The Pillars of Society), he aimed
a blow at the leading circles of his fatherland. The play is wholly
without a socialistic tendency, as is well known, yet so profound is
its pessimism that those who are unfamiliar with Norwegian affairs,
especially with the attitude of the poet to his public and to the
various parties of his native land, might take it for granted that
there was a tendency of the kind in the work. When it was played in
Berlin, many spectators (and, it may safely be asserted, not those
who were by any means lacking in judgment) yielded to the error that
it was written by a socialist. I was myself obliged to assure many
people that its author was, on the contrary, the favorite poet (at that
time) of the conservative party in Norway. In "The Pillars of Society,"
which has the effect of a supplement to "The Young Men's Union," the
two sides of the question are as little apparent as in the last-named
comedy. Ibsen proceeds here, as everywhere else, from a one-sided point
of view.
The relation between man and woman is one of those that has most
intensely absorbed Ibsen, and in regard to which he has cherished the
most original and the most modern sentiments.
In his first youthful works this relation is treated somewhat in the
traditional way. He attacks in his "Gildet paa Solhaug" (Banquet at
Solhaug) the same theme Björnson has chosen for his "Halte Hulda"
(Lame Hulda); that is, the position of a young man between the woman a
little older than himself whom he has loved in his youth, and the young
girl whom he longs with his whole heart to make his bride,--a theme
both human and universal, yet one that has frequently been varied. He
next represents, in his "Catiline" and in his "Fru Inger til Österaat"
(Mistress Inger at Österaat) the same rather forced yet stirring
motive, how a man who had led a licentious life in his youth is
punished through his love for a young girl who at the same time loves,
abhors, and curses him, because he had betrayed her sister and sent her
to her grave.
In his "Kjærlighedens Komedie" (Love's Comedy), Ibsen for the first
time takes up the erotic condition of his fatherland for his theme.
He had apparently received no trifling stimulus from contemporary
Norwegian literature. While Björnson during his first period was
influenced by popular tradition and popular poetry, Ibsen was incited
to action in his early days by the most advanced thinkers of the time.
There is something in the inspiration of "Love's Comedy" that may be
traced back to Camilla Collet's "Amtmandens Dötre" (The Magistrate's
Daughters). The latter daring book at that time occupied every
Norwegian mind; and it contained the same witty, though rather less
well planned attack on betrothals and marriages that in Ibsen's drama
is conducted by a firm, manly hand. So far as similes and figures are
concerned, the influence of Camilla Collet is very perceptible. Ibsen's
celebrated "tea-comparison" is derived from her. In "The Magistrate's
Daughters" we read of love, as follows:--
"Guard, O mankind, this our life's first bloom.... Heed its growth and
its fruit.... Do not lightly disturb its tender, budding leaf, in the
belief that the coarse blossoms that come later are good enough....
No; they are not good enough. There is as great a difference between
the two kinds, as there is between the tea we ordinary mortals must
be content with, and that which the emperor of the Celestial Kingdom
drinks, and which is the only genuine tea; it is gathered first, and is
so delicate and tender that it must be plucked with gloves, after the
gleaners have washed twenty-four times."