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THE COLLECTED WORKS OF
HENRIK IBSEN
VOLUME X
HEDDA GABLER
THE MASTER BUILDER
THE COLLECTED WORKS OF
HENRIK IBSEN
_Copyright Edition. Complete in 12 Volumes._
_Crown 8vo, price 4s. each._
=ENTIRELY REVISED AND EDITED BY=
=WILLIAM ARCHER=
Vol. I. Lady Inger, The Feast at Solhoug, Love’s
Comedy
Vol. II. The Vikings, The Pretenders
Vol. III. Brand
Vol. IV. Peer Gynt
Vol. V. Emperor and Galilean (2 parts)
Vol. VI. The League of Youth, Pillars of Society
Vol. VII. A Doll’s House, Ghosts
Vol. VIII. An Enemy of the People, The Wild Duck
Vol. IX. Rosmersholm, The Lady from the Sea
Vol. X. Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder
Vol. XI. Little Eyolf, John Gabriel Borkman, When
We Dead Awaken
Vol. XII. From Ibsen’s Workshop
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN.
21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
THE COLLECTED WORKS OF
HENRIK IBSEN
COPYRIGHT EDITION
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VOLUME X
HEDDA GABLER
THE MASTER BUILDER
WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY
WILLIAM ARCHER
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: title page]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1912
UNIFORM EDITION
_First Printed, June 1907_
_New Impressions, September 1909, November 1912_
_Copyright 1907_
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION TO “HEDDA GABLER” vii
INTRODUCTION TO “THE MASTER BUILDER” xix
“HEDDA GABLER” 1
_Translated by_ EDMUND GOSSE and WILLIAM ARCHER
“THE MASTER BUILDER” 187
_Translated by_ EDMUND GOSSE and WILLIAM ARCHER
HEDDA GABLER.
INTRODUCTION.
From Munich, on June 29, 1890, Ibsen wrote to the Swedish poet, Count
Carl Snoilsky: “Our intention has all along been to spend the summer in
the Tyrol again. But circumstances are against our doing so. I am at
present engaged upon a new dramatic work, which for several reasons has
made very slow progress, and I do not leave Munich until I can take with
me the completed first draft. There is little or no prospect of my being
able to complete it in July.” Ibsen did not leave Munich at all that
season. On October 30 he wrote: “At present I am utterly engrossed in a
new play. Not one leisure hour have I had for several months.” Three
weeks later (November 20) he wrote to his French translator, Count
Prozor: “My new play is finished; the manuscript went off to Copenhagen
the day before yesterday.... It produces a curious feeling of emptiness
to be thus suddenly separated from a work which has occupied one’s time
and thoughts for several months, to the exclusion of all else. But it is
a good thing, too, to have done with it. The constant intercourse with
the fictitious personages was beginning to make me quite nervous.” To
the same correspondent he wrote on December 4: ”The title of the play is
_Hedda Gabler_. My intention in giving it this name was to indicate that
Hedda, as a personality, is to be regarded rather as her father’s
daughter than as her husband’s wife. It was not my desire to deal in
this play with so-called problems. What I principally wanted to do was
to depict human beings, human emotions, and human destinies, upon a
groundwork of certain of the social conditions and principles of the
present day.“
So far we read the history of the play in the official
“Correspondence.”[1] Some interesting glimpses into the poet’s moods
during the period between the completion of _The Lady from the Sea_ and
the publication of _Hedda Gabler_ are to be found in the series of
letters to Fräulein Emilie Bardach, of Vienna, published by Dr. George
Brandes.[2] This young lady Ibsen met at Gossensass in the Tyrol in the
autumn of 1889. The record of their brief friendship belongs to the
history of _The Master Builder_ rather than to that of _Hedda Gabler_,
but the allusions to his work in his letters to her during the winter of
1889 demand some examination.
So early as October 7, 1889, he writes to her: ”A new poem begins to
dawn in me. I will execute it this winter, and try to transfer to it the
bright atmosphere of the summer. But I feel that it will end in
sadness—such is my nature.“ Was this “dawning” poem _Hedda Gabler_? Or
was it rather _The Master Builder_ that was germinating in his mind? Who
shall say? The latter hypothesis seems the more probable, for it is hard
to believe that, at any stage in the incubation of _Hedda Gabler_, he
can have conceived it as even beginning in a key of gaiety. A week
later, however, he appears to have made up his mind that the time had
not come for the poetic utilisation of his recent experiences. He writes
on October 15: ”Here I sit as usual at my writing-table. Now I would
fain work, but am unable to. My fancy, indeed, is very active. But it
always wanders away. It wanders where it has no business to wander
during working hours. I cannot repress my summer memories—nor do I wish
to. I live through my experiences again and again and yet again. To
transmute it all into a poem, I find, in the meantime, impossible.“
Clearly, then, he felt that his imagination ought to have been engaged
on some theme having no relation to his summer experiences—the theme, no
doubt, of _Hedda Gabler_. In his next letter, dated October 29, he
writes: “Do not be troubled because I cannot, in the meantime, create
(_dichten_). In reality I am for ever creating, or, at any rate,
dreaming of something which, when in the fulness of time it ripens, will
reveal itself as a creation (_Dichtung_).” On November 19 he says: “I am
very busily occupied with preparations for my new poem. I sit almost the
whole day at my writing-table. Go out only in the evening for a little
while.” The five following letters contain no allusion to the play; but
on September 18, 1890, he wrote: “My wife and son are at present at
Riva, on the Lake of Garda, and will probably remain there until the
middle of October, or even longer. Thus I am quite alone here, and
cannot get away. The new play on which I am at present engaged will
probably not be ready until November, though I sit at my writing-table
daily, and almost the whole day long.”
Here ends the history of _Hedda Gabler_, so far as the poet’s letters
carry us. Its hard clear outlines, and perhaps somewhat bleak
atmosphere, seem to have resulted from a sort of reaction against the
sentimental “dreamery” begotten of his Gossensass experiences. He sought
refuge in the chill materialism of Hedda from the ardent
transcendentalism of Hilda, whom he already heard knocking at the door.
He was not yet in the mood to deal with her on the plane of poetry.[3]
_Hedda Gabler_ was published in Copenhagen on December 16, 1890. This
was the first of Ibsen’s plays to be translated from proof-sheets and
published in England and America almost simultaneously with its first
appearance in Scandinavia. The earliest theatrical performance took
place at the Residenz Theater, Munich, on the last day of January 1891,
in the presence of the poet, Frau Conrad-Ramlo playing the title-part.
The Lessing Theater, Berlin, followed suit on February 10. Not till
February 25 was the play seen in Copenhagen, with Fru Hennings as Hedda.
On the following night it was given for the first time in Christiania,
the Norwegian Hedda being Fröken Constance Bruun. It was this production
which the poet saw when he visited the Christiania Theater for the first
time after his return to Norway, August 28, 1891. It would take pages to
give even the baldest list of the productions and revivals of _Hedda
Gabler_ in Scandinavia and Germany, where it has always ranked among
Ibsen’s most popular works. The admirable production of the play by Miss
Elizabeth Robins and Miss Marion Lea, at the Vaudeville Theatre, London,
April 20, 1891, may be counted the second great step towards the
popularisation of Ibsen in England, the first being the
Charrington-Achurch production of _A Doll’s House_ in 1889. Miss Robins
afterwards repeated her fine performance of Hedda many times, in London,
in the English provinces, and in New York. The character has also been
acted in London by Eleonora Duse, and as I write (March 5, 1907) by Mrs.
Patrick Campbell, at the Court Theatre. In America, Hedda has frequently
been acted by Mrs. Fiske, Miss Nance O’Neill and other actresses—quite
recently by a Russian actress, Madame Alla Nazimova, who (playing in
English) has made a great success both in this part and in Nora. The
first French Hedda Gabler was Mlle. Marthe Brandès, who played the part
at the Vaudeville Theatre, Paris, on December 17, 1891, the performance
being introduced by a lecture by M. Jules Lemaître. In Holland, in
Italy, in Russia, the play has been acted times without number. In short
(as might easily have been foretold) it has rivalled _A Doll’s House_ in
world-wide popularity.
It has been suggested,[4] I think without sufficient ground, that Ibsen
deliberately conceived _Hedda Gabler_ as an “international” play, and
that the scene is really the “west end” of any great European city. To
me it seems quite clear that Ibsen had Christiania in mind, and the
Christiania of a somewhat earlier period than the ’nineties. The
electric cars, telephones, and other conspicuous factors in the life of
a modern capital are notably absent from the play. There is no electric
light in Secretary Falk’s villa. It is still the habit for ladies to
return on foot from evening parties, with gallant swains escorting them.
This “suburbanism,” which so distressed the London critics of 1891, was
characteristic of the Christiania Ibsen himself had known in the
’sixties—the Christiania of _Love’s Comedy_—rather than of the greatly
extended and modernised city of the end of the century. Moreover,
Lövborg’s allusions to the fiord, and the suggested picture of Sheriff
Elvsted, his family and his avocations, are all distinctively Norwegian.
The truth seems to be very simple—the environment and the subsidiary
personages are all thoroughly national, but Hedda herself is an
“international” type, a product of civilisation by no means peculiar to
Norway.
We cannot point to any individual model or models who “sat to” Ibsen for
the character of Hedda.[5] The late Grant Allen declared that Hedda was
“nothing more nor less than the girl we take down to dinner in London
nineteen times out of twenty”; in which case Ibsen must have suffered
from a superfluity of models, rather than from any difficulty in finding
one. But the fact is that in this, as in all other instances, the word
“model” must be taken in a very different sense from that in which it is
commonly used in painting. Ibsen undoubtedly used models for this trait
and that, but never for a whole figure. If his characters can be called
portraits at all, they are composite portraits. Even when it seems
pretty clear that the initial impulse towards the creation of a
particular character came from some individual, the original figure is
entirely transmuted in the process of harmonisation with the dramatic
scheme. We need not, therefore, look for a definite prototype of Hedda;
but Dr. Brandes shows that two of that lady’s exploits were probably
suggested by the anecdotic history of the day.
Ibsen had no doubt heard how the wife of a well-known Norwegian
composer, in a fit of raging jealousy excited by her husband’s prolonged
absence from home, burnt the manuscript of a symphony which he had just
finished. The circumstances under which Hedda burns Lövborg’s manuscript
are, of course, entirely different and infinitely more dramatic; but
here we have merely another instance of the dramatisation or
“poetisation” of the raw material of life. Again, a still more painful
incident probably came to his knowledge about the same time. A beautiful
and very intellectual woman was married to a well-known man who had been
addicted to drink, but had entirely conquered the vice. One day a mad
whim seized her to put his self-mastery and her power over him to the
test. As it happened to be his birthday, she rolled into his study a
small keg of brandy, and then withdrew. She returned some time
afterwards to find that he had broached the keg, and lay insensible on
the floor. In this anecdote we cannot but recognise the germ, not only
of Hedda’s temptation of Lövborg, but of a large part of her character.
“Thus,” says Dr. Brandes, “out of small and scattered traits of reality
Ibsen fashioned his close-knit and profoundly thought-out works of art.”
For the character of Eilert Lövborg, again, Ibsen seems unquestionably
to have borrowed several traits from a definite original. A young Danish
man of letters, whom Dr. Brandes calls Holm, was an enthusiastic admirer
of Ibsen, and came to be on very friendly terms with him. One day Ibsen
was astonished to receive, in Munich, a parcel addressed from Berlin by
this young man, containing, without a word of explanation, a packet of
his (Ibsen’s) letters, and a photograph which he had presented to Holm.
Ibsen brooded and brooded over the incident, and at last came to the
conclusion that the young man had intended to return her letters and
photograph to a young lady to whom he was known to be attached, and had
in a fit of aberration mixed up the two objects of his worship. Some
time after, Holm appeared at Ibsen’s rooms. He talked quite rationally,
but professed to have no knowledge whatever of the letter-incident,
though he admitted the truth of Ibsen’s conjecture that the “belle dame
sans merci” had demanded the return of her letters and portrait. Ibsen
was determined to get at the root of the mystery; and a little inquiry
into his young friend’s habits revealed the fact that he broke his fast
on a bottle of port wine, consumed a bottle of Rhine wine at lunch, of
Burgundy at dinner, and finished off the evening with one or two more
bottles of port. Then he heard, too, how, in the course of a night’s
carouse, Holm had lost the manuscript of a book; and in these traits he
saw the outline of the figure of Eilert Lövborg.
Some time elapsed, and again Ibsen received a postal packet from Holm.
This one contained his will, in which Ibsen figured as his residuary
legatee. But many other legatees were mentioned in the instrument—all of
them ladies, such as Fräulein Alma Rothbart, of Bremen, and Fräulein
Elise Kraushaar, of Berlin. The bequests to these meritorious spinsters
were so generous that their sum considerably exceeded the amount of the
testator’s property. Ibsen gently but firmly declined the proffered
inheritance; but Holm’s will no doubt suggested to him the figure of
that red-haired “Mademoiselle Diana” who is heard of but not seen in
_Hedda Gabler_, and enabled him to add some further traits to the
portraiture of Lövborg. When the play appeared, Holm recognised himself
with glee in the character of the bibulous man of letters, and
thereafter adopted “Eilert Lövborg” as his pseudonym. I do not,
therefore, see why Dr. Brandes should suppress his real name; but I
willingly imitate him in erring on the side of discretion. The poor
fellow died several years ago.
Some critics have been greatly troubled as to the precise meaning of
Hedda’s fantastic vision of Lövborg “with vine-leaves in his hair.”
Surely this is a very obvious image or symbol of the beautiful, tho
ideal, aspect of bacchic elation and revelry. Antique art, or I am much
mistaken, shows us many figures of Dionysus himself and his followers
with vine-leaves entwined in their hair. To Ibsen’s mind, at any rate,
the image had long been familiar. In _Peer Gynt_ (Act iv. sc. 8), when
Peer, having carried off Anitra, finds himself in a particularly festive
mood, he cries: “Were there vine-leaves around, I would garland my
brow.” Again, in _Emperor and Galilean_ (Pt. II. Act i.) where Julian,
in the procession of Dionysus, impersonates the god himself, it is
directed that he shall wear a wreath of vine-leaves. Professor
Dietrichson relates that among the young artists whose society Ibsen
frequented during his first years in Rome, it was customary, at their
little festivals, for the revellers to deck themselves in this fashion.
But the image is so obvious that there is no need to trace it to any
personal experience. The attempt to place Hedda’s vine-leaves among
Ibsen’s obscurities is an example of the firm resolution not to
understand which animated the criticism of the ’nineties.
Dr. Brandes has dealt very severely with the character of Eilert
Lövborg, alleging that we cannot believe in the genius attributed to
him. But where is he described as a genius? The poet represents him as a
very able student of sociology; but that is a quite different thing from
attributing to him such genius as must necessarily shine forth in every
word he utters. Dr. Brandes, indeed, declines to believe even in his
ability as a sociologist, on the ground that it is idle to write about
the social development of the future. “To our prosaic minds,” he says,
“it may seem as if the most sensible utterance on the subject is that of
the fool of the play: ‘The future! Good heavens, we know nothing of the
future.’” The best retort to this criticism is that which Eilert himself
makes: ”There’s a thing or two to be said about it all the same.“ The
intelligent forecasting of the future (as Mr. H. G. Wells has shown) is
not only clearly distinguishable from fantastic Utopianism, but is
indispensable to any large statesmanship or enlightened social activity.
With very real and very great respect for Dr. Brandes, I cannot think
that he has been fortunate in his treatment of Lövborg’s character. It
has been represented as an absurdity that he should think of reading
extracts from his new book to a man like Tesman, whom he despises. But
though Tesman is a ninny, he is, as Hedda says, a ”specialist“—he is a
competent, plodding student of his subject. Lövborg may quite naturally
wish to see how his new method, or his excursion into a new field,
strikes the average scholar of the Tesman type. He is, in fact, ”trying
it on the dog“—neither an unreasonable nor an unusual proceeding. There
is, no doubt, a certain improbability in the way in which Lövborg is
represented as carrying his manuscript around, and especially in Mrs.
Elvsted’s production of his rough draft from her pocket; but these are
mechanical trifles, on which only a niggling criticism would dream of
laying stress.
Of all Ibsen’s works, _Hedda Gabler_ is the most detached, the most
objective—a character-study pure and simple. It is impossible—or so it
seems to me—to extract any sort of general idea from it. One cannot even
call it a satire, unless one is prepared to apply that term to the
record of a “case” in a work on criminology. Reverting to Dumas’s dictum
that a play should contain “a painting, a judgment, an ideal,” we may
say that _Hedda Gabler_ fulfils only the first of these requirements.
The poet does not even pass judgment on his heroine: he simply paints
her full-length portrait with scientific impassivity. But what a
portrait! How searching in insight, how brilliant in colouring, how rich
in detail! Grant Allen’s remark, above quoted, was, of course, a
whimsical exaggeration: the Hedda type is not so common as all that,
else the world would quickly come to an end. But particular traits and
tendencies of the Hedda type are very common in modern life, and not
only among women. Hyperæsthesia lies at the root of her tragedy. With a
keenly critical, relentlessly solvent intelligence, she combines a
morbid shrinking from all the gross and prosaic detail of the sensual
life. She has nothing to take her out of herself—not a single
intellectual interest or moral enthusiasm. She cherishes, in a languid
way, a petty social ambition; and even that she finds obstructed and
baffled. At the same time she learns that another woman has had the
courage to love and venture all, where she, in her cowardice, only
hankered and refrained. Her malign egoism rises up uncontrolled, and
calls to its aid her quick and subtle intellect. She ruins the other
woman’s happiness, but in doing so incurs a danger from which her sense
of personal dignity revolts. Life has no such charm for her that she
cares to purchase it at the cost of squalid humiliation and
self-contempt. The good and the bad in her alike impel her to have done
with it all; and a pistol-shot ends what is surely one of the most
poignant character-tragedies in literature. Ibsen’s brain never worked
at higher pressure than in the conception and adjustment of those
“crowded hours” in which Hedda, tangled in the web of Will and
Circumstance, struggles on till she is too weary to struggle any more.
It may not be superfluous to note that the “a” in “Gabler” should be
sounded long and full, like the “a” in “garden”—_not_ like the “a” in
“gable” or in “gabble.”
-----
Footnote 1:
Letters 214, 216, 217, 219.
Footnote 2:
In the Ibsen volume of _Die Literatur_ (Berlin).
Footnote 3:
Dr. Julius Elias (_Neue deutsche Rundschau_, December 1906, p. 1462)
makes the curious assertion that the character of Thea Elvsted was in
part borrowed from this “Gossensasser Hildetypus.” It is hard to see
how even Ibsen’s ingenuity could distil from the same flower two such
different essences as Thea and Hilda.
Footnote 4:
See article by Herman Bang in _Neue deutsche Rundschau_, December
1906, p. 1495.
Footnote 5:
Dr. Brahm (_Neue deutsche Rundschau_, December 1906, p. 1422) says
that, after the first performance of _Hedda Gabler_ in Berlin, Ibsen
confided to him that the character had been suggested by a German lady
whom he met in Munich, and who did not shoot, but poisoned herself.
Nothing more seems to be known of this lady. See, too, an article by
Julius Elias in the same magazine, p. 1460.
THE MASTER BUILDER.
INTRODUCTION.
With _The Master Builder_—or _Master Builder Solness_, as the title runs
in the original—we enter upon the final stage in Ibsen’s career. “You
are essentially right,” the poet wrote to Count Prozor in March 1900,
“when you say that the series which closes with the Epilogue (_When We
Dead Awaken_) began with _Master Builder Solness_.”
“Ibsen,” says Dr. Brahm, ”wrote in Christiania all the four works which
he thus seems to bracket together—_Solness_, _Eyolf_, _Borkman_, and
_When We Dead Awaken_. He returned to Norway in July 1891, for a stay of
indefinite length; but the restless wanderer over Europe was destined to
leave his home no more.... He had not returned, however, to throw
himself, as of old, into the battle of the passing day. Polemics are
entirely absent from the poetry of his old age. He leaves the State and
Society at peace. He who had departed as the creator of Falk [in _Love’s
Comedy_] now, on his return, gazes, not satirically, but rather in a
lyric mood, into the secret places of human nature and the wonders of
his own soul.“
Dr. Brahm, however, seems to be mistaken in thinking that Ibsen returned
to Norway with no definite intention of settling down. Dr. Julius Elias
(an excellent authority) reports that shortly before Ibsen left Munich
in 1891, he remarked one day, “I must get back to the North!” “Is that a
sudden impulse?” asked Elias. “Oh no,” was the reply; ”I want to be a
good head of a household and have my affairs in order. To that end I
must consolidate my property, lay it down in good securities, and get it
under control—and that one can best do where one has rights of
citizenship.“ Some critics will no doubt be shocked to find the poet
whom they have written down an “anarchist” confessing such bourgeois
motives.
After his return to Norway, Ibsen’s correspondence became very scant,
and we have no letters dating from the period when he was at work on
_The Master Builder_. On the other hand, we possess a curious lyrical
prelude to the play, which he put on paper on March 16, 1892. It is said
to have been his habit, before setting to work on a play, to
“crystallise in a poem the mood which then possessed him”; but the
following is the only one of these keynote-poems which has been
published. I give it in the original language, with a literal
translation:
DE SAD DER, DE TO—
De sad der, de to, i saa lunt et hus
ved höst og i vinterdage,
Saa brændte huset. Alt ligger i grus.
De to faar i asken rage.
For nede i den er et smykke gemt,—
et smykke, som aldrig kan brænde,
Og leder de trofast, hænder det nemt
at det findes af ham eller hende.
Men finder de end, de brandlidte to,
det dyre, ildfaste smykke,—
aldrig hun finder sin brændte tro,
han aldrig sin brændte lykke.
THEY SAT THERE, THE TWO—
They sat there, the two, in so cosy a house, through autumn and winter
days. Then the house burned down. Everything lies in ruins. The two
must grope among the ashes.
For among them is hidden a jewel—a jewel that never can burn. And if
they search faithfully, it may easily happen that he or she may find
it.
But even should they find it, the burnt-out two—find this precious
unburnable jewel—never will she find her burnt faith, he never his
burnt happiness.
This is the latest piece of Ibsen’s verse that has been given to the
world; but one of his earliest poems—first printed in 1858—was also, in
some sort, a prelude to _The Master Builder_. Of this a literal
translation may suffice. It is called
BUILDING-PLANS
I remember as clearly as if it had been to-day the evening when, in
the paper, I saw my first poem in print. There I sat in my den, and,
with long-drawn puffs, I smoked and I dreamed in blissful
self-complacency.
”I will build a cloud-castle. It shall shine all over the North. It
shall have two wings: one little and one great. The great wing shall
shelter a deathless poet; the little wing shall serve as a young
girl’s bower.“
The plan seemed to me nobly harmonious; but as time went on it fell
into confusion. When the master grew reasonable, the castle turned
utterly crazy; the great wing became too little, the little wing fell
to ruin.
Thus we see that, thirty-five years before the date of _The Master
Builder_, Ibsen’s imagination was preoccupied with a symbol of a master
building a castle in the air, and a young girl in one of its towers.
There has been some competition among the poet’s young lady friends for
the honour of having served as his model for Hilda. Several, no doubt,
are entitled to some share in it. One is not surprised to learn that
among the papers he left behind were sheaves upon sheaves of letters
from women. “All these ladies,” says Dr. Julius Elias, ”demanded
something of him—some cure for their agonies of soul, or for the
incomprehension from which they suffered; some solution of the riddle of
their nature. Almost every one of them regarded herself as a problem to
which Ibsen could not but have the time and the interest to apply
himself. They all thought they had a claim on the creator of Nora.... Of
this chapter of his experience, Fru Ibsen spoke with ironic humour.
‘Ibsen (I have often said to him), Ibsen, keep these swarms of
over-strained womenfolk at arm’s length.’ ‘Oh no (he would reply), let
them alone. I want to observe them more closely.’ His observations would
take a longer or shorter time as the case might be, and would always
contribute to some work of art.“
The principal model for Hilda was doubtless Fräulein Emilie Bardach, of
Vienna, whom he met at Gossensass in the autumn of 1889. He was then
sixty-one years of age; she is said to have been seventeen. As the lady
herself handed his letters to Dr. Brandes for publication, there can be
no indiscretion in speaking of them freely. Some passages from them I
have quoted in the introduction to _Hedda Gabler_—passages which show
that at first the poet deliberately put aside his Gossensass impressions
for use when he should stand at a greater distance from them, and
meanwhile devoted himself to work in a totally different key. On October
15, 1889, he writes, in his second letter to Fräulein Bardach: “I cannot
repress my summer memories, nor do I want to. I live through my
experiences again and again, and yet again. To transmute it all into a
poem I find, in the meantime, impossible. In the meantime? Shall I
succeed in doing so sometime in the future? And do I really wish to
succeed? In the meantime, at any rate, I do not.... And yet it must come
in time.” The letters number twelve in all, and are couched in a tone of
sentimental regret for the brief, bright summer days of their
acquaintanceship. The keynote is struck in the inscription on the back
of a photograph which he gave her before they parted: _An die Maisonne
eines Septemberlebens—in Tirol_, 27/9/89.[6] In her album he had written
the words:
Hohes, schmerzliches Glück—
um das Unerreichbare zu ringen![7]
in which we may, if we like, see a foreshadowing of the Solness frame of
mind. In the fifth letter of the series he refers to her as “an
enigmatic Princess”; in the sixth he twice calls her “my dear Princess”;
but this is the only point at which the letters quite definitely and
unmistakably point forward to _The Master Builder_. In the ninth letter
(February 6, 1890) he says: “I feel it a matter of conscience to end,
or, at any rate, to restrict, our correspondence.” The tenth letter, six
months later, is one of kindly condolence on the death of the young
lady’s father. In the eleventh (very short) note, dated December 30,
1890, he acknowledges some small gift, but says: “Please, for the
present, do not write to me again.... I will soon send you my new play
[_Hedda Gabler_]. Receive it in friendship, but in silence!” This
injunction she apparently obeyed. When _The Master Builder_ appeared, it
would seem that Ibsen did not even send her a copy of the play; and we
gather that he was rather annoyed when she sent him a photograph signed
“Princess of Orangia.” On his seventieth birthday, however, she
telegraphed her congratulations, to which he returned a very cordial
reply. And here their relations ended.
That she was right, however, in regarding herself as his principal model
for Hilda, appears from an anecdote related by Dr. Elias.[8] It is not
an altogether pleasing anecdote, but Dr. Elias is an unexceptionable
witness, and it can by no means be omitted from an examination into the
origins of _The Master Builder_. Ibsen had come to Berlin in February
1891 for the first performance of _Hedda Gabler_. Such experiences were
always a trial to him, and he felt greatly relieved when they were over.
Packing, too, he detested; and Elias having helped him through this
terrible ordeal, the two sat down to lunch together, while awaiting the
train. An expansive mood descended upon Ibsen, and chuckling over his
champagne-glass, he said: ”Do you know, my next play is already hovering
before me—of course in vague outline. But of one thing I have got firm
hold. An experience: a woman’s figure. Very interesting, very
interesting indeed. Again spice of devilry in it.“ Then he related how
he had met in the Tyrol a Viennese girl of very remarkable character.
She had at once made him her confidant. The gist of her confessions was
that she did not care a bit about one day marrying a well brought-up
young man—most likely she would never marry. What tempted and charmed
and delighted her was to lure other women’s husbands away from them. She
was a little dæmonic wrecker; she often appeared to him like a little
bird of prey, that would fain have made him, too, her booty. He had
studied her very, very closely. For the rest, she had had no great
success with him. ”She did not get hold of me, but I got hold of her—for
my play. Then I fancy“ (here he chuckled again) “she consoled herself
with some one else.” Love seemed to mean for her only a sort of morbid
imagination. This, however, was only one side of her nature. His little
model had had a great deal of heart and of womanly understanding; and
thanks to the spontaneous power she could gain over him, every woman
might, if she wished it, guide some man towards the good. “Thus Ibsen
spoke,” says Elias, ”calmly and coolly, gazing as it were into the far
distance, like an artist taking an objective view of some
experience—like Rubek speaking of his soul-thefts. He had stolen a soul,
and put it to a double employment. Thea Elvsted and Hilda Wangel are
intimately related—are, indeed, only different expressions of the same
nature.“ If Ibsen actually declared Thea and Hilda to be drawn from one
model, we must of course take his word for it; but the relationship is
hard to discern.
There can be no reasonable doubt, then, that the Gossensass episode gave
the primary impulse to _The Master Builder_. But it seems pretty well
established, too, that another lady, whom he met in Christiania after
his return in 1891, also contributed largely to the character of Hilda.
This may have been the reason why he resented Fraülein Bardach’s
appropriating to herself the title of “Princess of Orangia.”
The play was published in the middle of December 1892. It was acted both
in Germany and England before it was seen in the Scandinavian capitals.
Its first performance took place at the Lessing Theatre, Berlin, January
19, 1893, with Emanuel Reicher as Solness and Frl. Reisenhofer as Hilda.
In London it was first performed at the Trafalgar Square Theatre (now
the Duke of York’s) on February 20, 1893, under the direction of Mr.
Herbert Waring and Miss Elizabeth Robins, who played Solness and Hilda.
This was one of the most brilliant and successful of English Ibsen
productions. Miss Robins was almost an ideal Hilda, and Mr. Waring’s
Solness was exceedingly able. Some thirty performances were given in
all, and the play was reproduced at the Opera Comique later in the
season, with Mr. Lewis Waller as Solness. In the following year Miss
Robins acted Hilda in Manchester. In Christiania and Copenhagen the play
was produced on the same evening, March 8, 1893; the Copenhagen Solness
and Hilda were Emil Poulsen and Fru Hennings. A Swedish production, by
Lindberg, soon followed, both in Stockholm and Gothenburg. In Paris
_Solness le constructeur_ was not seen until April 3, 1894, when it was
produced by “L’Œuvre” with M. Lugné-Poë as Solness. This company,
sometimes with Mme. Suzanne Desprès and sometimes with Mme. Berthe Bady
as Hilda, in 1894 and 1895 presented the play in London, Brussels,
Amsterdam, Milan, and other cities. In October 1894 they visited
Christiania, where Ibsen was present at one of their performances, and
is reported by Herman Bang to have been so enraptured with it that he
exclaimed, “This is the resurrection of my play!” On this occasion Mme.
Bady was the Hilda. The first performance of the play in America took
place at the Carnegie Lyceum, New York, on January 16, 1900, with Mr.
William H. Pascoe as Solness and Miss Florence Kahn as Hilda. The
performance was repeated in the course of the same month, both at
Washington and Boston.
In England, and probably elsewhere as well, _The Master Builder_
produced a curious double effect. It alienated many of the poet’s
staunchest admirers, and it powerfully attracted many people who had
hitherto been hostile to him. Looking back, it is easy to see why this
should have been so; for here was certainly a new thing in drama, which
could not but set up many novel reactions. A greater contrast could
scarcely be imagined than that between the hard, cold, precise outlines
of _Hedda Gabler_ and the vague mysterious atmosphere of _The Master
Builder_, in which, though the dialogue is sternly restrained within the
limits of prose, the art of drama seems for ever on the point of
floating away to blend with the art of music. Substantially, the play is
one long dialogue between Solness and Hilda; and it would be quite
possible to analyse this dialogue in terms of music, noting (for
example) the announcement first of this theme and then of that, the
resumption and reinforcement of a theme which seemed to have been
dropped, the contrapuntal interweaving of two or more motives, a scherzo
here, a fugal passage there. Leaving this exercise to someone more
skilled in music (or less unskilled) than myself, I may note that in
_The Master Builder_ Ibsen resumes his favourite retrospective method,
from which in _Hedda Gabler_ he had in great measure departed. But the
retrospect with which we are here concerned is purely psychological. The
external events involved in it are few and simple in comparison with the
external events which are successively unveiled in the retrospective
passages of _The Wild Duck_ or _Rosmersholm_. The matter of the play is
the soul-history of Halvard Solness, recounted to an impassioned
listener—so impassioned, indeed, that the soul-changes it begets in her
form an absorbing and thrilling drama. The graduations, retardations,
accelerations of Solness’s self-revealment are managed with the subtlest
art, so as to keep the interest of the spectator ever on the stretch.
The technical method was not new; it was simply that which Ibsen had
been perfecting from _Pillars of Society_ onward; but it was applied to
a subject of a nature not only new to him, but new to literature.
That the play is full of symbolism it would be futile to deny; and the
symbolism is mainly autobiographic. The churches which Solness sets out
by building doubtless represent Ibsen’s early romantic plays, the “homes
for human beings,” his social dramas; while the houses with high towers,
merging into “castles in the air,” stand for those spiritual dramas,
with a wide outlook over the metaphysical environment of humanity, on
which he was henceforth to be engaged. Perhaps it is not altogether
fanciful to read a personal reference into Solness’s refusal to call
himself an architect, on the ground that his training has not been
systematic—that he is a self-taught man. Ibsen too was in all essentials
self-taught; his philosophy was entirely unsystematic; and, like
Solness, he was no student of books. There may be an introspective note
also in that dread of the younger generation to which Solness confesses.
It is certain that the old Master Builder was not lavish of his
certificates of competence to young aspirants, though there is nothing
to show that his reticence ever depressed or quenched any rising genius.
On the whole, then, it cannot be doubted that several symbolic motives
are inwoven into the iridescent fabric of the play. But it is a great
mistake to regard it as essentially and inseparably a piece of
symbolism. Essentially it is the history of a sickly conscience, worked
out in terms of pure psychology. Or rather, it is a study of a sickly
and a robust conscience side by side. “The conscience is very
conservative,” Ibsen has somewhere said; and here Solness’s conservatism
is contrasted with Hilda’s radicalism—or rather would-be radicalism, for
we are led to suspect, towards the close, that the radical too is a
conservative in spite of herself. The fact that Solness cannot climb as
high as he builds implies, I take it, that he cannot act as freely as he
thinks, or as Hilda would goad him into thinking. At such an altitude
his conscience would turn dizzy, and life would become impossible to
him. But here I am straying back to the interpretation of symbols. My
present purpose is to insist that there is nothing in the play which has
no meaning on the natural-psychological plane, and absolutely requires a
symbolic interpretation to make it comprehensible. The symbols are
harmonic undertones; the psychological melody is clear and consistent
without any reference to them.[9] It is true that, in order to accept
the action on what we may call the realistic level, we must suppose
Solness to possess and to exercise, sometimes in spite of himself, and
sometimes unconsciously, a considerable measure of hypnotic power. But
the time is surely past when we could reckon hypnotism among
“supernatural” phenomena. Whether the particular forms of hypnotic
influence attributed to Solness do actually exist is a question we need
not determine. The poet does not demand our absolute credence, as though
he were giving evidence in the witness-box. What he requires is our
imaginative acceptance of certain incidents which he purposely leaves
hovering on the border between the natural and the preternatural, the
explained and the unexplained. In this play, as in _The Lady from the
Sea_ and _Little Eyolf_, he shows a delicacy of art in his dalliance
with the occult which irresistibly recalls the exquisite genius of
Nathaniel Hawthorne.[10]
The critics who insist on finding nothing but symbolism in the play have
fastened on Mrs. Solness’s “nine lovely dolls,” and provided the most
amazing interpretations for them. A letter contributed in 1893 to the
_Westminster Gazette_ records an incident which throws a curious light
on the subject, and may be worth preserving. “At a recent first-night,”
I wrote, ”I happened to be seated just behind a well-known critic. He
turned round to me and said, ‘I want you to tell me what is _your_
theory of those “nine lovely dolls.” Of course one can see that they are
entirely symbolical.’ ‘I am not so sure of that,’ I replied, remembering
a Norwegian cousin of my own who treasured a favourite doll until she
was nearer thirty than twenty. ‘They of course symbolise the unsatisfied
passion of motherhood in Mrs. Solness’s heart, but I have very little
doubt that Ibsen makes use of this “symbol” because he has observed a
similar case, or cases, in real life.’ ‘What!’ cried the critic. ‘He has
seen a grown-up, a middle-aged, woman continuing to “live with” her
dolls!’ I was about to say that it did not seem to me so very
improbable, when a lady who was seated next me, a total stranger to both
of us, leant forward and said, ‘Excuse my interrupting you, but it may
perhaps interest you to know that _I have three dolls to which I am
deeply attached!_’ I will not be so rude as to conjecture this lady’s
age, but we may be sure that a very young woman would not have had the
courage to make such an avowal. Does it not seem that Ibsen knows a
thing or two about human nature—English as well as Norwegian—which we
dramatic critics, though bound by our calling to be subtle
psychologists, have not yet fathomed?“ In the course of the
correspondence which followed, one very apposite anecdote was quoted
from an American paper, the _Argonaut_: “An old Virginia lady said to a
friend, on finding a treasured old cup cracked by a careless maid, ‘I
know of nothing to compare with the affliction of losing a handsome
piece of old china.’ ‘Surely,’ said the friend, ‘it is not so bad as
losing one’s children.’ ‘Yes, it is,’ replied the old lady, ’for when
your children die, you do have the consolations of religion, you know.’”
It would be a paradox to call _The Master Builder_ Ibsen’s greatest
work, but one of his three or four greatest it assuredly is. Of all his
writings, it is probably the most original, the most individual, the
most unlike any other drama by any other writer. The form of _Brand_ and
_Peer Gynt_ was doubtless suggested by other dramatic poems—notably by
_Faust_. In _The Wild Duck_, in _Rosmersholm_, in _Hedda Gabler_, even
in _Little Eyolf_ and _John Gabriel Borkman_, there remain faint traces
of the French leaven which was so strong in the earlier plays. But _The
Master Builder_ had no model and has no parallel. It shows no slightest
vestige of outside influence. It is Ibsen, and nothing but Ibsen.
-----
Footnote 6:
”To the May-sun of a September life—in Tyrol.“
Footnote 7:
”High, painful happiness—to struggle for the unattainable!“
Footnote 8:
_Neue deutsche Rundschau_, December 1906, p. 1462.
Footnote 9:
This conception I have worked out at much greater length in an essay,
entitled _The Melody of the Master Builder_, appended to the shilling
edition of the play, published in 1893. I there retell the story,
transplanting it to England and making the hero a journalist instead
of an architect, in order to show that (if we grant the reality of
certain commonly-accepted phenomena of hypnotism) there is nothing
incredible or even extravagantly improbable about it. The argument is
far too long to be included here, but the reader who is interested in
the subject may find it worth referring to.
Footnote 10:
For an instance of the technical methods by which he suggested the
supernormal element in the atmosphere of the play, see Introduction to
_A Doll’s House_, p. xiv.
HEDDA GABLER
(1890)
CHARACTERS.
GEORGE TESMAN.[11]
HEDDA TESMAN, _his wife_.
MISS JULIANA TESMAN, _his aunt_.
MRS. ELVSTED.
JUDGE[12] BRACK.
EILERT LÖVBORG.
BERTA, _servant at the Tesmans_.
_The scene of the action is Tesman’s villa, in the west end of
Christiania._
HEDDA GABLER.
PLAY IN FOUR ACTS.
-------
ACT FIRST.
_A spacious, handsome, and tastefully furnished drawing-room, decorated
in dark colours. In the back, a wide doorway with curtains drawn
back, leading into a smaller room decorated in the same style as
the drawing-room. In the right-hand wall of the front room, a
folding door leading out to the hall. In the opposite wall, on the
left, a glass door, also with curtains drawn back. Through the
panes can be seen part of a veranda outside, and trees covered
with autumn foliage. An oval table, with a cover on it, and
surrounded by chairs, stands well forward. In front, by the wall
on the right, a wide stove of dark porcelain, a high-backed
arm-chair, a cushioned foot-rest, and two footstools. A settee,
with a small round table in front of it, fills the upper
right-hand corner. In front, on the left, a little way from the
wall, a sofa. Further back than the glass door, a piano. On either
side of the doorway at the back a what-not with terra-cotta and
majolica ornaments.—Against the back wall of the inner room a
sofa, with a table, and one or two chairs. Over the sofa hangs the
portrait of a handsome elderly man in a General’s uniform. Over
the table a hanging lamp, with an opal glass shade.—A number of
bouquets are arranged about the drawing-room, in vases and
glasses. Others lie upon the tables. The floors in both rooms are
covered with thick carpets.—Morning light. The sun shines in
through the glass door._
_MISS JULIANA TESMAN, with her bonnet on and carrying a parasol, comes
in from the hall, followed by BERTA, who carries a bouquet wrapped
in paper. MISS TESMAN is a comely and pleasant-looking lady of
about sixty-five. She is nicely but simply dressed in a grey
walking-costume. BERTA is a middle-aged woman of plain and rather
countrified appearance._
MISS TESMAN.
[_Stops close to the door, listens, and says softly_:] Upon my word, I
don’t believe they are stirring yet!
BERTA.
[_Also softly._] I told you so, Miss. Remember how late the steamboat
got in last night. And then, when they got home!—good Lord, what a lot
the young mistress had to unpack before she could get to bed.
MISS TESMAN.
Well well—let them have their sleep out. But let us see that they get a
good breath of the fresh morning air when they do appear.
[_She goes to the glass door and throws it open._
BERTA.
[_Beside the table, at a loss what to do with the bouquet in her hand._]
I declare there isn’t a bit of room left. I think I’ll put it down here,
Miss.
[_She places it on the piano._
MISS TESMAN.
So you’ve got a new mistress now, my dear Berta. Heaven knows it was a
wrench to me to part with you.
BERTA.
[_On the point of weeping._] And do you think it wasn’t hard for me too,
Miss? After all the blessed years I’ve been with you and Miss Rina.[13]
MISS TESMAN.
We must make the best of it, Berta. There was nothing else to be done.
George can’t do without you, you see—he absolutely can’t. He has had you
to look after him ever since he was a little boy.
BERTA.