If we glance over the work of Ibsen’s life-time, we see that every
single ideal of the day which he dealt with in his writings was by him
destroyed. First came that absolute faith which was the fundamental
Christian ideal in _Brand_: he destroyed it. Then came the romantic
capriciousness of a bourgeois soul in _Per Gynt_: he destroyed that
also. In his social dramas he dealt with the conventions of society,
and them he also destroyed. Afterwards came woman....
Ibsen is not an erotic, and his instinct taught him very little about
woman. As woman she has no attractions for him, she is nothing more
to him than an idea--a figure in a game of chess. He began to push
these figures backwards and forwards. His first women were ghostly
dialecticians. He did not know woman sufficiently well to write of
her according to his own perceptions, so he modelled her according
to recognised literary forms, _i.e._ after the writings of former
generations. This was the origin of the glorification of a mother’s
love (Agnes) in _Brand_, and the glorification of waiting (Solveig) in
_Per Gynt_, both of which are creations of undoubted poetical beauty,
for Ibsen was a great poet in his youth.
His social dramas were the result of discontent, and he sought for
and found the discontented woman. His method of creation is worthy of
notice. His men differ, but with his women the course of development
is always clearly discernible. In _The League of Youth_, which is one
of his earliest pieces, Selma already contains Nora in the bud, while
Petra in one of his other dramas resembles a photograph of Lona; Dr
Rank afterwards turns into Oswald; Fru Alving has the temperament
which develops into Rebecca and stands in doubt before the possibility
of murder, Rebecca commits it, and both without moral compunction. Yet
in spite of this, the glorification of woman reached its zenith in
Fru Alving, and as formerly its tendency was to increase, so now it
began to decrease. Rebecca is followed by the Lady from the Sea, and
she in turn by Hedda--lower, ever lower. There is always one special
peculiarity, as I have just signified, which Ibsen carries on from one
character to the other, and which he either increases or destroys.
For instance, Rebecca longs for life and is courageous, while Ellida
thirsts for life but is not courageous, and Hedda is not courageous
nor does she thirst for life, but is cowardly and inquisitive. In each
piece he leaves a little bit of ideality to be dissected in his next
work, and the last remnant of the ideal bequeathed by Hedda is “a
beautiful death.” The Master Builder’s death is no longer beautiful.
Thus Ibsen’s constructive method is revealed.
Men always write about woman as they imagine her to be and as they
desire her, and it is the same when a woman writes, she always pictures
herself as man sees her. It is woman’s nature to mould herself after
a form, and to desire a form in which she can mould herself. But of
course this manner of speaking, thinking, acting always is and remains
only a superficial form. There is something beneath it which follows
other laws and is seldom revealed to the gaze of man. This is perhaps
the reason why Ibsen, though he did not draw his women from nature,
was destined in a few years’ time to meet his Lonas, Noras, and
Rebeccas in real life. The Lonas founded high schools for the advanced
education of women, became students themselves and educated others, the
Noras became authoresses and produced a redundant literature dealing
with morals, and the Rebeccas claimed the right of an unmarried woman
of thirty to take possession of the man whom they considered worthy of
being made happy.
V
When Ibsen reappeared on the scenes with his _Master Builder_, after
an interval during which he had become celebrated, the physiognomy
which he presented was one that was quite unexpected. He seems to be in
the same predicament as “the old fellow who did not know how to help
himself.” Everything goes round in a circle, as it did in Solness’s
head before he fell from the tower. And if it is possible to find
any meaning at all in this very obscure piece, it is that Ibsen had
a presentiment that he was going to fall down off the height of his
dialectic scaffolding, but that he was not able to give up his useless
habit of climbing, which, for such an old man, was a very break-neck
amusement.
This presentiment has been fulfilled, for in _Little Eyolf_ he really
did fall down and break his leg. And this leg-breaking is quite in
keeping with the rest of Ibsen’s dramas. It is as naturalistic as it is
symbolic, and its foundation is logical.
If we to-day glance back at Ibsen’s works, we can borrow the result
of his quiet meditation and say: Henrik Ibsen is himself the little
Eyolf of the middle class, begotten by the union of the Gallic formula
of the rights of humanity with the Teutonic deterioration of race;
compare Rita and Almers. And as soon as the parents had accomplished
this, they attempted no more; again compare Rita and Almers. Their only
achievement was a brain that developed itself in a logical manner.
From the beginning to the end of Ibsen’s work the one thing lacking
is synthesis. Synthesis is one with personality, and Ibsen is not a
personality; he is all brain. He has not, in any one of his books,
the warmth and pulsation that belong to a complete nature; one feels
something resembling warmth, yes, something very like fever-heat,
in the passages where he describes cruelty; we need only recall the
martyrdom of Agnes in _Brand_. He was a man of brains who composed;
but the brain cannot compose. The blood composes, the soul composes,
the nerves compose, but of all these he had very little--there was
indeed a despairing lack of them in the year 1848 and thereabout. What
did that period bring with it? A wordy warfare in which the logic of
Judaism assumed the highest tone. Wherever this logic found its way,
it imported debates upon problems, and Ibsen became the greatest of
its pupils. He agitated, he “revolutionised,” he occasioned more than
one act of momentary liberation. There was one characteristic which he
retained from the days when he had been an apothecary’s apprentice, and
that was an affection for acids. His entire authorship comes under the
head of acids. He was never a psychologist, only a constructive agent,
and since _Rosmersholm_ even his constructive power has forsaken him;
his men, Wangel, Tesmann, Solness, Almers are only variations of the
same Rosmer. His women, Hedda, Hilda, Rita, are obvious derivations
from the woman _à la_ Strindberg. And now that he is nearing his end,
he stands where his own Rita stands, whose last hope it is to make
little civilised Eyolf-cripples out of the ragged, unmannerly, yet
vigorous fisher class.