Ibsen made known to the English Public by Mr. Edmund Gosse--The First
Translations--Ibsen acted in London--The Performers and the
Public--Encounters between the Critics--Mr. Archer once more--Affinity
between the Norwegian Character and the English--Ibsen's Realism suited to
English Taste; his Characters adaptable to English Life--The Women in his
Plays--Ibsen and Mr. Jones--Present and Future Influence of
Ibsen--Objections and Obstacles.
"There is now living at Munich a middle-aged Norwegian gentleman, who
walks in and out among the inhabitants of that gay city, observing all
things, observed of few, retired, contemplative, unaggressive.
Occasionally he sends a roll of MS. off to Copenhagen, and the Danish
papers announce that a new poem of Ibsen's is about to appear."
It was by these characteristic lines that England learnt of the existence
of the singular man who exerts to-day so great an influence over the art
and the thought and the moral life of the whole of Europe. He was shut up
at that time in his meagre Dano-Norwegian glory, like that genie whom the
Eastern tale shows us imprisoned in a bottle. As for the author of the
article which brought him before the English public, he was a quite young
man, a subtle poet and delicate critic, Mr. Edmund Gosse. Nowadays he
occupies in the literary world one of the foremost places amongst those
who create and who criticise, but the best pieces of good fortune fall to
one's youth. In his distinguished career as a critic, he has had no more
precious stroke of luck than that of the finding of Ibsen, at an age at
which as a rule one has been hardly able to find oneself.
Mr. Gosse made known Ibsen's published works, his historical and
historico-legendary dramas, his first efforts towards taking up his
position in the domain of modern realism. He showed an indulgent
partiality towards _The Comedy of Love_, and justified it by ingenious
translations into verse of his own. He condemned _Emperor and Galilean_ as
only a half-success, although his faithful and penetrating analysis of it
did no wrong to any of the beauties of the piece. He rendered full justice
to the sombre grandeur of _Brand_ and the dazzling fancy of _Peer Gynt_.
In short, he heralded a poet and a satirist. Ibsen has long ago renounced
the first of these titles, and as for the second, Mr. Gosse must find him
somewhat _grele_ for the part. He could not, in 1873, foresee the
realistic dramatist, the reformer, the psychologist, and the symbolist,
who in turn have appeared before us. But he touched the right note, I
think, when he paid his homage to Ibsen as "a vast and sinister
genius"--"a soul full of doubt and sorrow and unfulfilled desire."
Ibsen entered into correspondence with his young critic, as Goethe before
him had done under analogous circumstances with Carlyle. Mr. Gosse was one
of the first to be informed of the internal crisis which was transforming
the poet's talent, and which was to be a starting-point for the series of
social and psychological dramas. "The play upon which I am now at work, he
wrote,"--it was _The Pillars of Society_,--"will give the spectator
exactly the same impression as he would have watching events of real life
running their course before his eyes." The stage was to be merely a room,
one of whose walls had been taken down that two thousand people might look
on at what was happening inside it. Mr. Gosse entreated the author of
_Brand_ and _Peer Gynt_ not to abandon poetry, but Ibsen followed his
destiny.
In England they began now to translate him. In 1876 Miss K. Ray gave an
English version of _Emperor and Galilean_; three years later the British
Scandinavian Society printed at Gloucester a selection of extracts from
his works. In 1882 Miss H. F. Lord translated _The Dolls' House_ under the
title of _Norah_, and prefixed to it an introduction in which she
represented Ibsen as a champion of Woman's Rights. Women like to form some
concrete picture of their friends, and Miss Henrietta Lord was careful to
inform her sisters that their defender has a powerful forehead, "a
delicate mouth which has no lips, but shuts energetically in a fine line,"
small blue eyes that almost disappear behind his spectacles, and a nose
quite northern in its irregularity; that he speaks softly, moves slowly,
and rarely gesticulates, and that his "self-command amounts to coldness,
but it is the snow which covers a volcano of wild and passionate power."
In 1886 Mr. Havelock Ellis published in the Camelot Classics three of
Ibsen's plays, _The Pillars of Society_, _Ghosts_, and _An Enemy of the
People_, accompanied by a general study in which he passed in review the
dramas of the social and psychological series, indicative of a strong
sympathy with the new ideas and marked in an extreme degree by a fine
literary sense. To this library _Ondine_ was added in 1888, and Mr. Gosse
returned to the scene to take matters up where he had left them in 1877.
Arrived now at the full maturity of his talent, he offered in 1889 an
analysis and appreciation of these prose dramas which may be regarded as
final in some respects.
It was in the year 1889 that a new period began for Ibsen's fame and
influence in England. People were no longer content to read him, they
attempted now to put him on the stage. He was tried at afternoon
performances, or, as a last resource, as a _fin de saison_, when there was
nothing any longer to be lost or gained, in some second-rate theatre which
was about to be closed, or which might be said to be only half open; a
little later he was played under the auspices of the Independent Theatre,
which is the _Theatre Libre_ of London, but which might be called even
more aptly the Nomadic Theatre, for it has no home of its own, and has to
take refuge, like a tramp, in houses that have no habitant. It may be said
that from 1889 to 1893 the Ibsenite drama lived in London a thoroughly
Bohemian life, never knowing whether it would dine nor where it would
sleep on the morrow. Yet there was a good side to this precarious
existence, namely, that there was involved in it no thought or care for
the question of shillings and pence. Business men have summed up an
undertaking or a man when they have said that it or he "does not pay." Now
Ibsen has never paid. If I might venture to invert that saying of Irving's
which I quoted in a previous chapter, I would affirm that artistic success
is most real when business is worst.
Little by little a group of actors and actresses was got together who gave
themselves up to the work, and interpreted their author with faith,
passion, and courage, ready to "confess" him, and to endure for him, and
with him, not death but hisses: I may mention Mr. Waring and Miss Robins,
and above all Miss Achurch. An Ibsenite public was coming into existence
at the same time, having for its nucleus a small group of those who had
been devotees from the first. In addition, there was a great number of
hostile critics come to condemn, but behaving themselves on the whole very
respectably. Again, there were some who were merely curious, genuinely
curious, who brought to these moving representations minds entirely open
and unprejudiced. These returned in thoughtful mood and exchanged
opinions upon the remarkable productions they had witnessed.
It was in the press that the great battles were waged. Many of the critics
lost their temper and their manners, and passed, without realising it,
from ridicule to mere rudeness. I do not confound these excesses either
with the serious discussion to which men of talent submitted Ibsen's
philosophy in lectures and in the Reviews, or with merry skits such as
those of Mr. Anstey, who gave us a "Pocket Ibsen" in the pages of _Punch_;
these parodies suggest, to my mind, a lack neither of comprehension nor of
respect. I refer to the furious and savage attacks which seemed to have
for object the driving back of Ibsen to Norway, much as the East-End
tailors would like to drive back to Hamburg those German immigrants who
lower the rate of their wages.
Mr. Archer was the target for the fiercest volleys of these battles, in
which he commanded the courageous little phalanx of Ibsenites; but he
returned shot for shot, and with usury, for his fire was infinitely more
destructive than that of his foes. Just as Mr. Gosse had revealed Ibsen to
the literary world fifteen years before, Mr. Archer introduced him now
into the world of the theatre.
If he entered into the Ibsen controversy so much later than his colleague,
it must not be concluded on this account that he was less well equipped
as regards preliminary study, or that he was upholding convictions that
were newly born. To him, also, Ibsen was an early love. So far back as
1873 he knew by heart, in the original, those admirable scenes in _Brand_,
which touch the soul to its depths. Before the performance of each new
play he would try to explain the Monster, and to get the public into the
way of looking it straight in the face; he would translate the symbolism
into the most intelligible terms, speaking as one speaks to children, with
an authoritative gentleness, a clearness of expression, and wealth of
exposition, to which his quick intelligence does not often have resort.
But the greatest service he has rendered to the cause, is his series of
translations, which are now in everybody's hands; not only do they convey
into English the intense realism of Ibsen's dialogues, but young authors
may learn from them, also, new flexions of familiar speech, and thus get a
step or two nearer to life.
Mr. Archer has been followed, and perhaps outrun, in his apostolate by
other writers full of ardour and talent. Amongst these vanguard critics it
is impossible not to mention Mr. Arthur B. Walkley, known to the readers
of the _Star_ as "Spectator," and to those of the _Speaker_ by his
initials, "A. B. W." To his name must be added that of Mr. George Bernard
Shaw, whose articles in the _Saturday Review_ have attracted much notice
during the year 1895, and have constituted a veritable campaign in Ibsen's
honour.
The theatrical managers, as you may suppose, gave Ibsen a wide berth. Mr.
Tree was the first of them who ventured to tackle him; this actor
possesses an inquiring mind, and a spirit ever ready to accept--even, at
need, to initiate--reforms. As long ago as 1891, in a lecture read before
the Playgoers' Club, he had given a very clever analysis of one of the
most striking of M. Maeterlinck's plays. In 1893 he produced a play of
Ibsen's at the Haymarket. The drama which he chose was _The Enemy of the
People_. He had supposed, not unreasonably, that the geniality, courage,
and invincible optimism of Stockmann would win the public. I imagine he
did not regret the experiment, for since then he has made a similar one
with a piece of Bjoernson's. Therein he has set a good example to a greater
actor, and in this connection I would venture to ask a question. Is Irving
to quit the stage without attempting an Ibsen part? However that may be,
the time is approaching when the Norwegian drama will pay. Not, of course,
like _Charley's Aunt_! One must not expect too much when one has only
genius. Ibsen can and should keep alive without robbing or coveting a
single one of lucky Mr. Penley's spectators.
Now that Ibsen is known in England, what influence does he exert, or will
he continue to exert in the future, upon English dramatic literature? By
what racial affinities was the way for this influence prepared? By what
prejudices--religious, philosophical, aesthetic--has it been impeded? To
what does it owe its strength? To the dramatist's art, or to the ideas
which inform his work? This is the last big question I have to face before
bringing my study to an end.
I do not wish to carry this question on to the moving bog of ethnography;
I should lose my life. I shall say only that the English turn towards the
Scandinavian world, much as we turn towards the Greco-Latin, with a vague
feeling of tenderness and of filial curiosity. If the Teuton is their
cousin, the Scandinavian is their brother; if not the eldest of the
family, at least the one who has best kept up his tradition. Thus it is to
him they have recourse when they would renew or seek inspiration in these
traditions. Is it not a significant fact that Mr. Gosse and Mr. Archer,
two of the most brilliant minds of their generation, should be familiar at
the age of twenty-five with the literary idiom of Denmark and Norway? Is
it not curious that the Sagas should have been the common source of
Carlyle's last work, and of the most important poem of William Morris? The
Sagas are the Commonplace Book, the _livre de raison_, in which this soul
of the North, free from all taint of the South, and from all antique
serfdom, has left its mark. For the Englishman, who reflects and ponders,
it is the real Bible of his race.
Just because the Norseman was the incarnation in the mediaeval world of the
Teutonic genius in all its purity, a certain number of enthusiasts will
not allow his descendants to exist in the present, and play their part in
modern life. To make of this little country a museum of Runic relics, to
make a mere caretaker of this vigorous little race, is worse than
pedantry; it is cruelty. Will it be believed that it was from such a
standpoint that objection was first raised against the acceptance of
Ibsen? The idea was so curiously retrograde and artificial, that it could
not long hold up against the force of the current. These archaeologists,
strayed into the field of criticism, made two mistakes: they misunderstood
the law which imposes movement and progress upon all living organisms; and
they were unable to recognise in Ibsen, beneath his modern aspect and
present-day doubts, that valiant temperament, at once fearless and blunt,
of the ancient Vikings,--as brave before the enigmas of thought as _they_
had been of yore before the perils of battle and the tempest.
Thus it was that Ibsen, like Oehlenschlaeger before him and Bjoernson in his
own day, made the Sagas his starting-point. It is in the Sagas that the
Norse genius had its root, as in deep and tranquil waters, its stem rising
towards the light and flowering above the surface. Even to-day, Norway and
Denmark take more pleasure in Ibsen's historical and semi-legendary dramas
than in his more recent works; but whatever they themselves and the
devotees of Runic tradition may think, their national character has
undergone change since the twelfth century. Many races have contributed to
the formation of their character, just as they have to that of the
English, and it is worthy of remark that in both cases the elements are
almost identical. The vigorous and energetic Finn, the weak and mystical
Laplander, the blue-eyed, fair-haired Norseman, silent and profound, could
all find their equivalents, if not their like, amongst the ancestors of
the British people. Their history has been different, and yet has had
points in common. Like England, Norway has had religious and political
individualism for school or rather for model. Absolute independence under
a nominal monarchy; freedom of the press and religious intolerance; no
nobility and no class distinctions--Norway has been since 1814 very much
what England would have been, had the semi-republican establishment of
Cromwell and Puritan Democracy endured.
In his strange poem, _Peer Gynt_, Ibsen intended to depict the Norwegian
type; and he has done so after a fashion which is the more intelligible to
a foreigner in that he has in some cases exaggerated the principal
features of this model to the point of caricature. The Norwegian mind is
full of wild dreams, which seem to him as real as actual facts. Leading a
hard and lonely existence amidst natural surroundings that seem to dwarf
and threaten them, the people learn to live in themselves and for
themselves. They have much pride and much ambition, and plenty of
political wisdom. It is their imagination that sends them into maritime
commerce, this being one of the ways left open to the spirit of adventure.
Peer Gynt sells idols to the Chinese and Bibles to the missionaries; this
second transaction redeeming the first. Twice he makes his fortune and
twice he loses it; but he is a spirited gambler, and a few oaths suffice
to comfort him for his most serious mischances. When, at the moment of his
death, he is enabled to rest his head upon the bosom of the woman he has
vilely betrayed, he accepts this final stroke of luck like all the
rest--grateful but unastonished. The most ludicrous scene of all is that
of a death agony! Peer Gynt's old mother is about to meet her end, and she
is seized with violent tremors. Her son, however, reminds her how, when he
was a boy, the two of them used to play together at horse and cart.
Supposing they had a game now? Where shall we drive to, mother? And off
they go to where God lives! They come to the gates and call upon St. Peter
for admission,--he's _got_ to let Peer Gynt's old mammy into Heaven! The
old woman breaks out into a guffaw, and in the midst of all this frolic,
cheered now and brightened up, she achieves the dread crossing. To French
readers this scene may seem a ghoulish farce: English humour accepts it
from Norwegian humour without demur. In copying from Peer Gynt the
portrait of one race, I had it in my mind to paint the portrait of a
second. The picture has two models. That is why Ibsen comes so easy to the
English mind--less difficult to understand than was Carlyle in his earlier
works. The Norwegian cosmopolitan is more intelligible than the Scottish
peasant, Germanized by a too long intimacy with Goethe and Jean Paul.
Everyone knows that Ibsen has his own way of constructing a drama, a way
which differs sensibly from ours. Is it better or worse? That is a
question with which I am not concerned. What should be noted, however, is
that the English, who have proved such wretched pupils in our school, and
who, after fifty years have been unable to master their Scribe, have
grasped everything they could turn to their own account in Ibsen's
methods. To understand this, we must remember that the English have a
horror of our realism, even when toned down and filtered through America.
Their compatriot, George Moore, despite his incontestable talent, has been
unable to get them to accept him. They read his works with curiosity but
without pleasure. We have seen in the preceding chapters that of their
three most prominent dramatists, two turn their backs resolutely against
realism, one by instinct, the other of set purpose; whilst the third
cannot acclimatise himself to it, his temperament carrying him off towards
the realm of fancy and humour. On this point they are at one with the
public. _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_ is an exception. It is a compromise
between the dramatic system of _Francillon_ and that of _Hedda
Gabler_--the second, I think, prevailing. Ibsen has brought to the English
the form, the kind, and the degree of realism they can put up with. Not
that they accept everything without demur, even in Ibsen's realism. They
draw the line at the brutality of certain details, and the almost childish
minuteness of others. Thus it was that Madame Solness's nine dolls
produced some tittering in the stalls.[14] In _Little Eyolf_, if Alfred
Allmers be allowed to make the avowal in the midst of his despair at the
tragic death of his little boy, that he had caught himself wondering what
he was going to have for dinner, I should not be surprised if there were,
at this point, a shudder of protest. But these moments in which the
dramatist and his English spectators are out of sympathy are rare.
Shakespeare taught them to be surprised in no way at seeing human nature
sink to the lowest depths after rising to giddy heights. What they want is
to pass quickly from facts to ideas, and from ideas to fancies, and then
to return suddenly to facts. The exact reproduction of life will never
seem to them, as at certain literary epochs it has seemed to us, the
supreme and final end of Art. It satisfies them only when it leads towards
the solution of some problem of conduct, towards the explanation of some
enigma of destiny, or of the fascinating secrets of this psychical world
in which we live without ever seeing it,--of what is in it, and beside it,
and beyond it. It must not be forgotten that symbolism is not a mere
pastime and amusement to the Northern races which are addicted to it, but
a real need born of their peculiar nature, a need which is not to be
replaced by that idolatry of forms and colours which prevails in the
joyous and sensuous South. When it is not satisfied, this need is
accentuated to the point of a longing, a craving. The fact translates and
suggests, follows or precedes, the thought; without the thought, it were
but an empty envelope, a dress without a wearer, a box containing nothing.
It serves, so to speak, as handmaid to the idea, and I would venture to
suggest this formula (which I believe truthful, though it seem strange):
In England, realism will be symbolical or non-existent.
If Ibsen's art, then, is to prove to be to English taste, it is because
this art is subordinated to the expression of certain moral feelings, and
secret tendencies of the inner life; and also because all the questions
with which the dramatist is taken up, are precisely those by which the
English race is absorbed and divided into opposing camps; because in fine,
Ibsen's message, to make use of the expression of Carlyle, is addressed to
this race more than to any other.
With regard to its bearing upon philosophy, let us take for instance that
theory of Atavism which is developed, first of all, in a lugubrious
episode in _The Dolls' House_, and which pervades _Ghosts_, and
_Rosmersholm_, and _The Lady from the Sea_; does it not find a fit and
well-equipped audience in the readers of Darwin, Huxley, and Herbert
Spencer? From a social standpoint, the ulcers which Ibsen cauterises are
the ulcers which eat also into the life of England. That tyranny of the
majority, that conventional and machine-like morality which stifles all
initiative, that cavilling, degrading charity which is not Christian, but
sectarian, are all well known to England. In Pastor Roerland and Pastor
Manders these things find expression,--in the former violent, impetuous,
fanatical, in the latter sheeplike and pusillanimous; the one is the
incarnation of intolerance, the other of human respect; and England is
well aware that she has both her Roerlands and her Manders. When, too, she
is shown a Consul Bernick upon the stage, who is full of fine sentiments,
but whose fortune is founded upon lies, and who sends out gallant fellows
on a ship destined to be wrecked, she must be reminded of her own
philanthropic ship-owners, enriched by the insuring of coffin-ships. And
just as she is capable of a Bernick, so she is not unequal to producing a
Stockmann, nor, in consequence, to understanding and loving this genial
_bavard_, this impassioned devotee of truth and virtue, this Don Quixote,
this Pangloss who would go to the martyr's stake, but prefers to stop on
the road. His enemies have broken his windows: what does he do? Sends for
a glazier! He picks up the stones that have been thrown at him, examines
them and criticises them. "Why, these are mere pebbles. There is hardly a
decent stone in the lot!" He has returned from a public meeting with his
trousers torn, and he comments thus philosophically upon the misadventure:
"When you propose to stand up for justice before men, you should be
careful not to wear your best pair of breeches." If these traits are not
English, I don't know what the English character is.
Were I to pass Ibsen's types in review one by one, I should find it easy
to show with what ease they adapt themselves to English life. Engstrand,
the man of the people, always a sinner and always lamenting his sin, who
makes a career and a livelihood out of his repentance; and Loevborg, that
noble but feeble character whom drunkenness drags into debauchery, and in
whom the temptations of one night nullify years of virtue and honest
endeavour;--these would require no modification or commentary upon the
London stage. But it is English women that Ibsen seems to have divined
best of all. Nearly all those demands of the Anglo-Saxon woman which evoke
so much talk to-day are contained in germ in the last scene of _The Dolls'
House_, which dates from 1879. The woman is tired of being a servant and a
plaything to the man; she sees herself confronted with responsibilities
and duties for which she has had no preparation; she wants to live her own
life as a reasoning and thinking being. This note is being re-echoed
daily in the Reviews and on the platforms open to women, and thus Norah's
cry is indefinitely prolonged.
It is more than fifteen years since Ibsen wrote: "In democracy will be
found the only solution of the social question. But the new state of
society should contain an aristocratic element, not the aristocracy of
birth or of the money-chest, not even the aristocracy of intellect, but
the aristocracy of character, of the will and of the soul. I expect much
in this direction from woman and from the working-man, and it will be to
the bringing nearer of their hour that my whole life-work shall be
devoted." I do not know whether this double promise has been kept. It
seems to me that the people have found in him but a wayward and
intermittent champion, and women a friend too pitilessly clear-sighted.
Women, both the good and the bad, are given traits of character, in
Ibsen's dramas, which are common to the Northern races. That _joie de
vivre_, which in Norah gushes forth into affectionate sympathy, but which
in Regina (in _Ghosts_) takes the form of a cold and marble-like
indifference, which can be touched by nothing save self-interest and
self-love; the jealousy and pride of Hedda Gabler, who prefers to send a
man to his death, rather than see him repentant, and brought to happiness
through the agency of another woman, and who decides to die herself rather
than submit to the yoke or endure the scorn of the world; the naively
animal sensualism of Rita Allmers (in _Little Eyolf_), who puts her
husband before her child, and plays the wanton to rekindle the fire which
had gone from his heart--to secure the marital attentions which are her
due: these are all characteristics which are to be met with beyond the
fiftieth parallel and north of the Pas de Calais, no less than north of
the Sound.
I shall not go so far as to say that Ibsen has taught the English
dramatists to understand the women of their race, but, at least, he has
brought out certain aspects of them which had remained unportrayed,
whether because the requisite psychological knowledge, or that rare
quality, pluck, had been lacking in those who had attempted to depict
them. Not all these dramatists accept Ibsen as their master; Sydney
Grundy, whilst disapproving most strongly of the insults with which a
certain section of the critics attack Ibsen and his partisans, has
declared outright that he himself is no disciple of the author of _The
Master Builder_. We can easily believe it; even without the declaration,
his work in itself would have told us as much. Mr. Pinero, also, does not
seem to me to have accepted any of Ibsen's ideas; but he must have
reflected upon his methods, and to some purpose, for if the brain which
conceived _Hedda Gabler_ is a powerful brain, the hand which constructed
its various parts, and wove them together, is a cunning hand.
As for Mr. Jones, he indeed has followed both the artist and thinker in
Ibsen. In speaking of his plays, I omitted designedly the adaptation which
he made of _A Dolls' House_, in collaboration with Mr. Herman, an
Alsatian, resident in London since 1870, who died three years ago. In
certain respects the English piece is better constructed than the
original, in as much as it rids us of Dr. Rank, who is an excrescence, and
of the love-affair of Krogstad and Madame Linden, which is really wanting
in common sense. But Mr. Jones, ill advised, I fancy, by a collaborator of
rather a timid and commonplace order of mind, shrank from that last scene
which may be repellent to some people, but which is really the whole play.
For that terrible door which shuts with so inexorable a clang, in the
midst of the silence of the night, separating husband and wife perhaps for
ever, and leaving Norah to seek her way in the dark and the cold,--symbols
of a life of which nothing is known, save that hardships will be met in
it,--the authors of _Breaking a Butterfly_ substituted a general
reconciliation. They justified the optimistic _denouement_ by making the
husband rise to that act of heroic devotion, which, in the original, Norah
declares she hoped for from him. Ibsen did not intend this, and he was
right. It is necessary that Norah should look for this sacrifice, and that
she should look in vain. Thus the man and the woman maintain their
individual characters: the one remains faithful to his practical logic,
the other to her romantic conception of life; and if everything does not
turn out well, at least everything is true in this most disunited of
_menages_.
Mr. Jones has been much happier when inspired by Ibsen than when he has
translated him. It is, above all, when he is depicting women that he seems
to me to be haunted by the memory of the Norwegian's heroines. It may be
said, speaking generally, that a breath of Ibsen has passed through all
his works during the last seven or eight years. But his dialogue is too
lively, he yields too much to the temptation of turning his wit to
account, he is of too gay a temperament, to be a veritable Ibsenite. It is
in these respects, indeed, that the divergence begins between the author
of _Hedda Gabler_ and his admirers on the other side of the Channel. The
English are ready to rail at life, but not to condemn it root and branch;
despite an apparent sombreness they know how to enjoy themselves, and they
consent to travel only as tourists in that world of Ibsen's, in which for
the few smiling and sunlit spaces, there frown such vast and mournful
solitudes, where nothing sings and nothing flowers.
It has been said that Ibsen is the Winter of the North and Bjoernson its
Spring. This Bjoernson is a strange personality. Intellect and temperament
have made a battlefield of his life. Born to write idylls, he has thrown
himself heart and soul into the warfare of journalism. He has come under,
and even sought, a thousand influences, instead of trying to find himself.
The friendly antagonism with Ibsen has done him more harm than good. This
connection has made him known to readers in Western Europe, but it has
drawn him into channels for which his faculties did not fit him, and have
failed to support him. By his faith in the future, and by his confident
and combative spirit, he seemed destined to please the English. Long
before Ibsen's name had been even mentioned in London, his _Arne_ and
_Synnove Solbakken_ had been read there, two sketches of peasant life
which will bear comparison with _La Mare au Diable_ and _La Petite
Fadette_; and the idealist novels he has published during the last ten
years became popular with his countrymen only after they had first
achieved success in England. But his plays up to the present have made but
little show upon the English stage, and he shares only to an infinitesimal
degree in the sympathies and antipathies of his illustrious rival.
When Ibsen attacks that class of puritans and hypocrites who turn away
their faces when they pass the entrance to a theatre, there is no
hesitation about applauding him and imitating him. But when he would shake
the whole edifice of society, and when he calls in question all the ideas
and customs upon which the edifice is based, the theatre hesitates to
follow him, for it feels that a portion of its clientele, and that the
best,--that which has always been constant in its support,--will be
startled and alarmed. The theatre is reactionary, and has good reason to
be: it is to its commercial interest to range itself alongside privilege
and tradition, against change and progress. It is on the side of those
who have money in their pockets, and who wish to amuse themselves, for
these are the people to whom it opens its doors. These people are
indignant when, having come to weep or to laugh, they are made to think;
when a man to whom they cannot but listen speaks to them of their rights
and their duties, of life and of death, of their most secret thoughts, of
what they would fain ignore or forget, and all this with a freedom, an air
of authority, a depth the theatre had never known before, the pulpit knows
no longer. Here is the key to the exclamations of surprise, the gusts of
anger, the broadsides of satire and ridicule, which Ibsen and his devotees
have had to face. But one gets used to everything, even to being insulted,
and gets even to like it. It is one of the amusements of the decadent.
Perhaps some day we shall see Ibsen's adversaries, fascinated by his
genius, follow his barque like the rats that followed the ratwife's in
_Little Eyolf_, and plunge into the deep waters to the music of his
flute.[15]