Ibsen. Stages of creativity
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Literature abstract on the topic:
Heinrich Ibsen
10-B student
Middle School No. 19
Kiseleva Dmitry
Sevastopol
Ibsen's work connects centuries - in the literal sense of the word. her
origins - in the ending, pre-revolutionary XVIII century, in Schiller's
tyranny and in the Rousseauist appeal to nature and to ordinary people. A
drama of the mature and late Ibsen, for all his deepest connection with
contemporary life, also outlines the essential features of the art of the 20th century -
its condensedness, experimentation, multi-layeredness.
For the poetry of the 20th century, according to one of the foreign researchers,
very characteristic, in particular, is the motif of the saw - with its grinding, with its sharp teeth. In his unfinished memoirs, Ibsen, describing his childhood, emphasizes the impression that the continuous screech of sawmills made on him, hundreds of which worked from morning to evening in his hometown of Skien. "When I later read about the guillotine," writes Ibsen, "I always thought of these sawmills." And that heightened sense of dissonance that
showed Ibsenchild, subsequently affected what he saw and
captured in his work screaming dissonances where others saw
wholeness and harmony.
At the same time, Ibsen's portrayal of disharmony is by no means disharmonic.
The world does not fall apart in his works into separate, unrelated fragments.
The form of Ibsen's drama is strict, clear, collected. The dissonance of the world
is revealed here in plays that are unified in their construction and coloring. bad
the organization of life is expressed in excellently organized works.
Ibsen showed himself to be a master of organizing complex material already in
youth. Oddly enough, in his homeland, Ibsen was originally
recognized as the first among all Norwegian writers, not as a playwright, but in
holidays, prologues to plays, etc. Young Ibsen was able to combine in such
poems, a clear deployment of thought with genuine emotionality,
using chains of images, largely stereotyped for that time, but in
sufficiently updated in the context of the poem.
Bearing in mind the call of G. Brandes to the Scandinavian writers "to put on
discussion of the problem" Ibsen at the end of the 19th century was often called the director
problems. But the roots of "problematic" art in Ibsen's work are very
deep! The movement of thought has always been extremely important for the construction of its
works, organically growing in his plays from the development of the inner world
characters. And this feature also anticipated important trends in the world
dramaturgy of the 20th century.
father, a wealthy businessman, went bankrupt when Henryk was eight years old, and
the boy had to start very early, before he was sixteen
independent life. He becomes an apothecary apprentice in Grimstad -
town, even smaller than Skien, and spends over six years there, living in
very difficult conditions. Already at this time, Ibsen develops a sharp
critical, protesting attitude towards modern society, especially
aggravated in 1848, under the influence of revolutionary events in Europe. IN
Grimstad Ibsen writes his first poems and his first play "Katilina"
April 28, 1850 Ibsen moves to the capital of the country
Christiania, where he prepares for the entrance exams to the university and
takes an active part in socio-political and literary life.
He writes many poems and articles, in particular, journalistic ones. IN
parody, grotesque piece "Norma, or Politician's Love" (1851) Ibsen
exposes the half-heartedness and cowardice of the then Norwegian opposition
parties in parliament - liberals and leaders of the peasant movement. He
draws closer to the labor movement, which was then rapidly developing in Norway "under
under the leadership of Marcus Trane, but soon overwhelmed by police measures. 26
September 1850, the premiere of the first play took place at the Christian Theater
Ibsen, who saw the light of the ramp, - "Bogatyrsky Kurgan".
Ibsen's name is gradually becoming known in literary and theatrical
circles. From the autumn of 1851, Ibsen became a full-time playwright again.
established theater in the wealthy commercial city of Bergen - the first theater
striving to develop national Norwegian art. In Bergen Ibsen
remains until 1857, after which he returns to Christiania, to the post
head and director of the National
Norwegian theatre. But Ibsen's financial position at this time remains
very bad. It becomes especially painful at the turn of the 60s,
when things go from bad to worse for the Christian Norwegian theater.
Only with the greatest difficulty, thanks to the selfless help of B. Bjornson,
Ibsen manages to leave Christiania in the spring of 1864 and go to Italy.
During all these years, both in Christiania and in Bergen, Ibsen's work
stands under the sign of the Norwegian national romance - a broad movement in
spiritual life of the country, which, after centuries of subjugation of Denmark, aspired
to assert the national identity of the Norwegian people, to create a national
Norwegian culture. An appeal to Norwegian folklore is the main
program of national romance, which continued and strengthened from the end of the 40s
years of patriotic aspirations of Norwegian writers of the previous decades.
For the Norwegian people, who were then in a forced union with
Sweden, national romance was one of the forms of struggle for
independence. It is quite natural that the greatest significance for the national
romance had the social stratum that was the bearer of the national
identity of Norway and the basis of its political revival - the peasantry,
retaining its basic way of life and its dialects, while
the urban population of Norway fully adopted Danish culture and Danish
At the same time, in its orientation towards the peasantry, national romance
often lost her sense of proportion. Peasant life to the extreme
idealized, turned into an idyll, and folklore motifs were interpreted not
in its true, sometimes very rude form, but how extremely
sublime, conventionally romantic.
This duality of national romance was felt by Ibsen. Already in
the first national romantic play from modern life ("Midsummer Night",
1852) Ibsen sneers at the lofty perception of Norwegian folklore,
characteristic of national romance: the hero of the play discovers that the fairy
Norwegian folklore - Huldra, with whom he was in love, has a cow
In an effort to avoid false romantic elation and find more
firm, not so illusory support for his work, Ibsen turns to
historical past of Norway, and in the second half of the 50s begins
reproduce the style of the ancient Icelandic saga with its stingy and clear manner
presentation. On this path, two of his plays are especially important: built on
the material of the ancient sagas, the drama "Warriors in Helgeland" (1857) and
folk-historical drama "The Struggle for the Throne" (1803). In a play of poetry
"Comedy of Love" (1862) Ibsen caustically ridicules the entire system of sublime
romantic illusions, considering the world of sober practice already more acceptable, not
embellished with ringing phrases. However, here, as in earlier
plays, Ibsen nevertheless outlines a certain "third dimension" - the world of genuine
feelings, deep experiences of the human soul, not yet erased and not
on display.
Intensified in the late 50s and early 60s, Ibsen's disappointment in
national romance was also connected with his disappointment in the Norwegian
political forces opposed to the conservative government. Ibsen
distrust of any political activity gradually develops,
skepticism arises, sometimes developing into aestheticism - into the desire
consider real life only as material and an occasion for artistic
effects. However, Ibsen immediately reveals that spiritual emptiness
which brings with it the transition to the position of aestheticism. Your first expression
finds this disengagement from individualism and aestheticism in a short poem
"On the Heights" (1859), anticipating "Brand".
Completely demarcates with all the problems of his young years Ibsen
in two philosophical-symbolic dramas of a large scale, in "Brand" (1865)
and in "Peer Gynt" (1867), already written in Italy, where he moved in 1864
year. Outside of Norway, in Italy and Germany, Ibsen remains more than
for a quarter of a century, until 1891, having visited his homeland only twice in all these years.
Both "Brand" and "Peer Gynt" are unusual in their form. It's kind of
dramatized poems ("Brand" was originally conceived as a poem,
several songs of which were written). In terms of volume, they are much larger than
normal size pieces. They combine lively, personalized looks with
generalized, emphatically typed characters: for example, in "Brand" only
some of the characters are given personal names, while others appear under
names: vogt, doctor, etc. By generalization and depth of problems
"Brand" and "Peer Gynt", for all their appeal to specific phenomena
Norwegian reality, closest to Goethe's Faust and to dramaturgy
The main problem in "Brand" and "Peer Gynt" is the fate of the human
personality in modern society. But the central figures of these plays
diametrically opposed. The hero of the first play, the priest Brand, is a man
extraordinary wholeness and strength. The hero of the second play, a peasant boy Per
Gynt, - the embodiment of the spiritual weakness of man, - the truth, the embodiment,
brought to gigantic proportions.
The brand does not retreat before any victims, does not agree to any
compromises, spares neither himself nor his loved ones in order to fulfill what he
considers it his mission. With fiery words he castigates half-heartedness, spiritual
flabbiness of modern people. He stigmatizes not only those who
directly opposed in the play, but all social institutions
modern society - in particular, the state. But although he succeeds
breathe a new spirit into your flock, poor peasants and fishermen in a distant
North, in the wild, abandoned land, and lead them to the shining mountain
peaks, its end is tragic. Seeing no clear goal on his
painful way up, the followers of Brand leave him and - seduced
with cunning speeches of the Vogt - they return to the valley. And Brand himself dies, bombarded
mountain avalanche. The wholeness of man, bought by cruelty and not knowing
mercy, also turns out, in this way, according to the logic of the play, condemned.
The predominant emotional element of "Brand" is pathos, indignation and
anger mixed with sarcasm. In "Peer Gynt", with several deep
lyrical scenes, sarcasm prevails.
"Peer Gynt" is the final disengagement of Ibsen from the national
romance. Ibsen's rejection of romantic idealization reaches here
its apogee. The peasants appear in "Peer Gynt" as rude, evil and greedy
people who are merciless to the misfortune of others. And the fantastic images of the Norwegian
folklore turn out to be ugly, dirty, evil creatures in the play.
True, in "Peer Gynt" there is not only Norwegian, but also global
reality. The entire fourth act, of enormous size, is devoted to wanderings
Pera away from Norway. But to the greatest extent the widest, pan-European,
by no means only the Norwegian sound gives "Per Gynt" its already
the central problem we have emphasized is the problem of the impersonality of the modern
human, extremely relevant for the bourgeois society of the XIX century. Per
Gynt knows how to adapt to any conditions in which he finds himself, he has
there is no inner pivot. Per's impersonality is especially remarkable
by the fact that he himself considers himself a special, unique person, called to
extraordinary accomplishments, and in every possible way emphasizes his own, Gyntian "I". But this
his specialness is manifested only in his speeches and dreams, and in his actions he
always capitulates to circumstances. Throughout his life he has always
was guided not by a truly human principle - be yourself, but
troll principle - revel in yourself.
And yet, perhaps the main thing in the play for both Ibsen himself and his
Scandinavian contemporaries was a merciless exposure of everything that
seemed sacred to national romance. Many in Norway and Denmark "Per
Gynt" was perceived as a work beyond the boundaries of poetry, rude and
unfair. Hans Christian Andersen called it the worst ever
the books they read. E. Grieg is extremely reluctant - in fact,
only because of the fee - he agreed to write music for the play and for a number of
put off fulfilling his promise for years. Moreover, in its wonderful
suite, which largely determined the world success of the play, he greatly strengthened
romantic sound of "Peer Gynt". As for the play itself,
it is extremely important that genuine, highest lyricism is present in it
only in those scenes in which there is no conditional
national-romantic tinsel and it turns out to be purely human
beginning - the deepest experiences of the human soul, correlated with the general
background of the play as a striking contrast to it. First of all, the scenes
associated with the image of Solveig, and the scene of the death of Åse, belonging to the most
touching episodes in world drama.
It was these scenes, combined with Grieg's music, that allowed "Per Gynt" to
perform all over the world as the epitome of Norwegian romance, although the play itself,
as we have already emphasized, was written in order to completely settle scores
with romance, get rid of it. Ibsen achieved this goal. After "Per
Gynt" he completely departs from romantic tendencies. External manifestation
this is served by his final transition in dramaturgy from verse to prose.
Living far from his homeland, Ibsen closely follows the evolution of the Norwegian
reality, which was rapidly developing in these years in the economic,
politically and culturally, and in his plays touches on many
pressing issues in Norwegian life. The first step in this direction was
sharp comedy "Union of Youth" (1869), which, however, in its
artistic structure in many respects reproduces traditional schemes
comedy intrigue. Genuine Ibsenian drama with themes from contemporary
life, which has a special, innovative poetics, was created only in the late 70s
But before that, in the period of time between the "Union of Youth" and "Pillars
society" (1877), Ibsen's attention is attracted by broad world problems and
general laws of the historical development of mankind. It was caused
the whole atmosphere of the 60s, rich in great historical events,
which ended with the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 and
Parisian commune. It began to seem to Ibsen that a decisive
historical turning point that the existing society is doomed to destruction and will
replaced by some new, freer forms of historical
existence. This feeling of an impending catastrophe, terrible and, along with
so desired, received its expression in some poems (especially in
poem "To my friend, a revolutionary speaker"), as well as in an extensive
"world-historical drama" "Caesar and the Galilean" (1873). In this duology
depicts the fate of Julian the Apostate, the Roman emperor who renounced
Christianity and trying to return to the ancient gods of the ancient world.
The main idea of the drama: the impossibility of returning to the stages already passed
historical development of mankind and at the same time the need
synthesizing the past and the present in some higher
social system. In terms of the play, a synthesis is necessary
the ancient kingdom of the flesh and the Christian kingdom of the spirit.
But Ibsen's aspirations did not come true. Instead of the collapse of bourgeois society
a long period of comparatively peaceful development and external
success. And Ibsen departs from the general problems of the philosophy of history,
returns to the problems of everyday life of contemporary society.
But, having already learned earlier not to dwell on those external forms, in
which human existence flows, and not to believe ringing phrases,
embellishing reality, Ibsen is clearly aware that on the new
historical stage within a prosperous society there are painful,
ugly phenomena, severe internal defects.
For the first time, Ibsen formulates this in his address to Brandeis
poem "Letter in verse" (1875). The modern world is represented here in
in the form of a well-equipped, comfortable steamer, passengers and
whose command, despite the appearance of complete well-being, is seized by
anxiety and fear - it seems to them that a corpse is hidden in the hold of the ship: this
means, according to the beliefs of sailors, the inevitability of the wreck of the ship.
Then the concept of modern reality as a world,
characterized by a radical break between appearance and interiority.
essence, becomes decisive for Ibsen's dramaturgy - as for the problems
his plays, and for their construction. The basic principle of Ibsen's
dramaturgy turns out to be an analytical composition, in which the development
action means the gradual discovery of certain secrets, the gradual
disclosure of internal trouble and tragedy, hiding behind a completely
prosperous outer shell of the depicted reality.
Forms of analytical composition can be very different. Yes, in
"Enemy of the People" (1882), which reveals cowardice and self-interest as
conservative and liberal forces of modern society, where very
the role of external, directly played out action on the stage is great,
the motive of analysis is introduced in the most literal sense of the word - namely,
chemical analysis. Dr. Stockmann sends a sample of water from
resort spring, the healing properties of which he himself discovered in his time,
and analysis shows that there are pathogenic microbes in the water brought from
wastewater from a tannery. Particularly indicative for Ibsen are such forms of analyticism in which the disclosure of the hidden fatal depths of an outwardly happy life is accomplished not only by removing deceptive appearances in a given period of time, but also by discovering chronologically distant sources of hidden evil. Starting from the present moment of action, Ibsen restores the prehistory of this moment, gets to the roots of what is happening on the stage. It is precisely the clarification of the prerequisites for the ongoing tragedy, the discovery of "plot secrets", which, however, have, however, by no means only plot significance, forms the basis of intense drama in such very different plays by Ibsen as, for example, "A Doll's House" (1879), "Ghosts "(1881), "Rosmersholm" (1886). Of course, in these plays, the action is also important, synchronous with the moment for which the play is timed, as if taking place in front of the audience. And of great importance in them - in terms of creating dramatic tension - is the gradual discovery of the sources of existing reality, deepening into the past. The special power of Ibsen as an artist lies in the organic combination of external and internal action with the integrity of the overall color and with the utmost expressiveness of individual details.
Thus, in "A Doll's House" elements of the analytical structure are extremely strong. They consist in the comprehension of the inner essence of the lawyer Helmer's family life, which at first glance is very happy, but based on lies and selfishness, which organizes the entire play. It also reveals the true nature of
Helmer himself, who turned out to be selfish and a coward, and his wife Nora, who at first appears as a frivolous creature and completely satisfied with her fate, but in fact turns out to be a strong person, capable of sacrifice and willing to think independently. To the analytical structure of the play
also includes the widespread use of prehistory, the disclosure of plot secrets, as an important driving force in the deployment of the action. Gradually it turns out that Nora, in order to borrow from the moneylender Krogstad the money needed for her husband's treatment, forged her father's signature. At the same time, the external action of the play also turns out to be very intense and tense: the growing threat of Nora's exposure, Nora's attempt to delay the moment when Helmer reads Krogstad's letter in the mailbox, etc.
And in "Ghosts", against the backdrop of incessant rain, there is
gradual elucidation of the true essence of the life that has befallen
fru Alvivg, widow of a wealthy chamberlain, and it is also discovered that her son
sick, and the true causes of his illness are exposed. Everything is clearer
the appearance of the late chamberlain, a depraved, drunk person, looms,
whose sins - both during his lifetime and after his death - Mrs. Alving tried
to hide to avoid scandal and to keep Oswald from knowing what his father was like.
Growing sense of imminent catastrophe culminates in fire
orphanage just built by Mrs. Alving to commemorate
never-existing virtues of her husband, and in an incurable disease
Oswald. Thus, here, too, the external and internal development of the plot
interact organically, uniting also with exceptionally seasoned
general color.
Of particular importance for Ibsen's dramaturgy at this time is the inner
character development. Even in the "Union of Youth" the world and the system of thought of the acting
faces, in fact, did not change throughout the play. Between
themes in Ibsen's dramas, starting with The Pillars of Society, the mental structure of the main
characters usually becomes different under the influence of events taking place on
scene, and in the results of "looking into the past". And this shift in their
the inner world often turns out to be almost the main thing in the entire plot
development. The evolution of Consul Bernic from a tough businessman to a man,
who has realized his sins and decided to repent, is the most important
the result of "Pillars of Society" Nora's final disappointment in her family
life, her awareness of the need to start a new existence in order to become
a full-fledged person - this is what the development of the action leads to in the "Puppet
house". And it is this process of Nora's internal growth that determines the plot
denouement of the play - Nora's departure from her husband. In "Enemy of the People" the most important role is played by
the path that Dr. Stockmann's thought goes through - from one
paradoxical discovery to another, even more paradoxical, but even more
common in the social sense. The situation is somewhat more complicated in "Ghosts".
Fru Alving's inner liberation from all the dogmas of habitual bourgeois morality
happened before the play began, but as the play progresses, Fru Alving comes to
understanding of the tragic mistake she made in refusing to
reshaping your life in accordance with your new beliefs and
cowardly hiding from everyone the fake face of her husband.
The decisive importance of changes in the spiritual life of heroes for the development
action explains why in Ibsen's plays of the late 70s and later such
a large place (especially in the endings) is given to dialogues and monologues,
saturated with generalized reasoning. It is in connection with this feature of his plays
Ibsen was repeatedly accused of excessive abstraction, of inappropriate
theorizing, in revealing the author's ideas too directly. However, such
verbal realizations of the ideological content of a play are always inextricably linked
Ibsen with its plot construction, with the logic of development depicted in the play
reality. It is also extremely important that those characters in whose mouth
the corresponding generalized reasoning is invested;
reasoning throughout the course of action. The experiences that have fallen to their lot make
them to think about very general questions and enable them to compose and
express your opinion on these issues. Of course, the Nora that we see in
the first act and which seems to us frivolous and cheerful
"squirrel", could hardly formulate those thoughts that are so clearly
are set out by her in the fifth act, during an explanation with Helmer. But it's all about
that in the course of the action it first became clear that Nora was already in the first act
in fact, it was different - it suffered a lot and was able to take serious
woman's decisions. And then the events depicted in the play opened their eyes
Burrows on many aspects of her life made her wiser.
In addition, it is by no means possible to put an equal sign between the views
Ibsen's characters and the views of the playwright himself. To some extent this
applies even to Dr. Stockman, a character who is in many ways the most
extremely pointed, super paradoxical form.
So, the huge role of the conscious, intellectual principle in
construction of the plot and in the behavior of the characters in Ibsen's dramaturgy is by no means
reduces its general adequacy to the world, which in this dramaturgy
displayed. Ibsen's hero is not a "mouthpiece of an idea", but a man who possesses all
dimensions inherent in human nature, including intelligence and
desire for activity. In this he differs decisively from the typical
characters of the naturalistic and
neo-romantic literature, in which the intellect that controls
human behavior has been disabled - partially or even completely. Is not
means that intuitive actions are completely alien to Ibsen's heroes. They
generally never turn into schemes. But their inner world is not intuition
is exhausted, and they are able to act, and not just endure the blows of fate.
The presence of such heroes is largely due to the fact that she herself
Norwegian reality due to the peculiarities of historical development
Norway was rich in such people. As Friedrich Engels wrote in 1890
in a letter to P. Ernst, "a Norwegian peasant _never was a serf_, and
this gives the whole development - just as in Castile - quite
different background. The Norwegian petty bourgeois is the son of a free peasant, and
as a result, he is a _real man_ compared to a degenerate
German tradesman. And the Norwegian philistine is as different as the sky from
land, from the wife of a German tradesman. And whatever, for example,
shortcomings of Ibsen's dramas, although these dramas reflect the world of small and medium
bourgeoisie, but a world completely different from the German one - a world in which people
still have character and initiative and act independently, although
sometimes, according to the concepts of foreigners, it is rather strange" (K. Marx and F. Engels,
Works, vol. 37, pp. 352-353.).
Prototypes of his heroes, active and intelligent, Ibsen found,
However, not only in Norway. Already from the mid-60s, Ibsen in general
comprehended his directly Norwegian problems in a broader
plan, as an integral moment in the development of global reality. IN
in particular, Ibsen's desire in the dramaturgy of the 70s and 80s to turn
to characters active and capable of resolute protest was supported
also by the presence in the then world of people who fought for the realization
their ideals without stopping at any sacrifice. Particularly important in
In this regard, Ibsen was an example of the Russian revolutionary movement,
whom the Norwegian playwright admired. So, in one of his conversations with G.
Brandeis, probably held in 1874. Ibsen, using his
favorite method - the method of paradox, extolled "remarkable oppression",
reigning in Russia, because this oppression gives rise to "beautiful
love of freedom". And he formulated: "Russia is one of the few countries on earth,
where people still love freedom and make sacrifices to it ... That is why the country stands
so high in poetry and art."
Asserting the role of consciousness in the behavior of his characters, Ibsen builds the action
of his plays as an inevitable process, naturally conditioned by certain
prerequisites. Therefore, he resolutely rejects any plot
exaggerations, any direct intervention of chance in the final
determining the fate of their heroes. The denouement of the play should come as
necessary result of the clash of opposing forces. stemming from their
genuine, deep character. The development of the plot must be significant,
that is, to be based on real, typical features of the depicted
reality. But this is not achieved by schematization of the plot. Against,
Ibsen's plays have a genuine vitality. Weaves into them
many different motives, specific and peculiar, directly
by no means generated by the main problem of the play. But these side motives
do not break or replace the logic of the development of the central conflict, but
only shade this conflict, sometimes even helping to make it
came forward with great force. So in "A Doll's House" there is a scene that could
would become the basis for the "happy denouement" of the collision depicted in the play.
When Krogstad finds out that Fru Linne, Nora's friend, loves him and is ready -
despite his dark past - to marry him, he offers her to take
back his fatal letter to Helmer. But Fru Linne does not want this. She
says: "No, Krogstad, do not demand your letter back ... Let Helmer
will know everything. May this unfortunate mystery come to light. Let them
finally, they will explain themselves frankly to each other. Impossible so
continued - these eternal secrets, evasions. "So, the action does not turn into
side under the influence of chance, but is heading towards its true denouement, in
which reveals the true nature of the relationship between Nora and her husband.
Both the poetics and the problems of Ibsen's plays from the late 70s to
the end of the 1990s did not remain unchanged. Those common features of Ibsen's
dramaturgy, which was discussed in the previous section, to the maximum extent
characteristic of her in the period between "Pillars of Society" and "Enemy of the People",
when Ibsen's works were most saturated with social
issues.
Meanwhile, since the mid-80s, to the fore in Ibsen's
creativity puts forward the complex inner world of man:
Ibsen problems of the integrity of the human personality, the possibility of implementation
a person of his calling, etc. Even if the immediate subject
plays, as, for example, in "Rosmersholm" (1886), are political in nature,
associated with the struggle between Norwegian conservatives and freethinkers, her
the real issue is still the clash between the egoistic and the
humanistic principles in the human soul, no longer subject to the norms
religious morality. The main conflict of the play is the conflict between the weak and
distant from life Johannes Rosmer, a former pastor who abandoned his
former religious beliefs, and Rebecca West, who lives in his house,
the illegitimate daughter of a poor and ignorant woman who has known the need
and humiliation. Rebecca is the bearer of a predatory morality who believes that she
has the right to achieve his goal at any cost, - he loves Rosmer and with the help
ruthless and cunning tricks achieves that Rosmer's wife ends
life of suicide. However, Rosmer, who does not accept any lie, striving for
education of free and noble people and desiring to act only
noble means, for all its weakness, it turns out to be stronger
Rebecca, although he also loves her. He refuses to accept happiness bought
the death of another person - and Rebecca obeys him. They end their lives
suicide by throwing herself into a waterfall, as Beate, Rosmer's wife, did.
But Ibsen's transition to a new problematic was completed even before
"Rosmersholm" - in "Wild Duck" (1884). In this play they rise again
questions to which "Brand" was devoted in its time. But brandovskoe
the demand for absolute uncompromisingness loses its heroism here,
appears even in an absurd, comic guise. Preaching brandovskaya
Gregers Werle brings only grief and death to the family of his old
friend, photographer Hjalmar Ekdal, whom he wants to morally uplift and save
from lies. Brand's intolerance towards people who do not dare to go beyond their own
everyday life, is replaced in the "Wild Duck" by a call to approach everyone
man, taking into account his strengths and capabilities. Gregers Werle is confronted by a doctor
Relling, who treats the "poor sick" (and, according to him, almost everyone is sick)
with the help of "worldly lies", that is, such self-deception that makes
meaningful and meaningful to their unsightly lives.
At the same time, the concept of "worldly lies" is by no means approved in "Wild
duck" completely. First of all, there are characters in the play who, from
"worldly lies" are free. This is not only a pure girl Hedwig, full of love,
ready for self-sacrifice - and really sacrificing herself. This and such
devoid of any sentimentality, people of practical life, as an experienced and
the ruthless businessman Werle, Gregers' father, and his housekeeper, Fr Serby. And although
old Werle and Fru Serbia are extremely selfish and selfish, they still stand,
but the logic of the play - refusing all illusions and calling things one's own
names - incomparably higher than those who indulge in "worldly lies." They succeed
even to carry out that very "true marriage" based on truth and
sincerity, to which Gregers vainly urged Hjalmar Ekdal and his wife
Ginu. And then - and this is especially important - the concept of "worldly lies"
refuted in all of Ibsen's subsequent dramaturgy - and above all in
"Rosmersholme", where Rosmer's steady desire for truth wins, his
rejection of all self-deception and lies.
The central problem of Ibsen's dramaturgy, starting with Rosmersholm, is
the problem of the dangers that lurk in a person's striving for complete
fulfillment of his calling. Such a desire, in itself, not only
natural, but for Ibsen even obligatory, turns out to be sometimes achievable
only at the expense of the happiness and lives of other people - and then there is a tragic
conflict. This problem, first posed by Ibsen already in The Warriors in
Helgeland", deployed with the greatest force in the "Builder Solnes" (1892) and
in "Jun Gabriel Borkman" (1896). The heroes of both these plays decide to bring in
sacrifice to fulfill their calling, the fate of other people and endure
crash.
Solness, successful in all his endeavors, who managed to achieve a wide
fame, despite the fact that he did not receive a real architectural
education, perishes not from a collision with external forces. The arrival of the young
Hilda, encouraging him to become as bold as he once was,
is just a pretext for his death. The real cause of death lies in his
duality and weakness. On the one hand, he acts as a man ready
sacrifice the happiness of other people: his architectural career, he
does, in his own opinion, at the expense of the happiness and health of his wife, and
in his office he mercilessly exploits the old architect Bruvik and
his talented son, to whom he does not give the opportunity on his own
work, because he is afraid that he will soon surpass him. On the other hand, he
constantly feels the injustice of his actions and accuses himself even of
for which he, in fact, cannot be blamed at all. He is all the time
anxiously waiting for retribution, retribution, and retribution really overtakes him,
but not in the guise of forces hostile to him, but in the guise of a person who loves him and believes in him.
Hilda. Encouraged by her, he climbs the high tower he built
buildings - and falls, seized with dizziness.
But the absence of internal duality does not bring success to a person,
trying to fulfill his calling, regardless of other people.
To the banker and big businessman Borkman, who dreams of becoming Napoleon in
economic life of the country and conquer more and more forces of nature, alien
every weakness. A crushing blow is dealt to him by external forces. To his enemies
manages to convict him of misusing other people's money. But even after
long imprisonment, he remains internally unbroken and
dreams of returning to his favorite activity. However, genuine
the cause of his downfall, revealed in the course of the play, lies deeper.
As a young man he left the woman he loved and who loved
him, and married her wealthy sister in order to obtain funds without which he
could not begin his speculations. And just the fact that he betrayed his
true love, killed a living soul in a woman who loves him, leads, logically
plays, Borkmann to disaster.
Both Solnes and Borkman - each in their own way - people of a large format. And this
they attract Ibsen, who has long sought to establish a full-fledged,
an indestructible human personality. But realize their calling they fatal
way they can, only by losing a sense of responsibility to other people.
This is the essence of the basic conflict that Ibsen saw in modern
his society and which, being very relevant for that era, anticipated
also - albeit indirectly and in an extremely weakened form - a terrible
the reality of the 20th century, when the forces of reaction to achieve their goals
sacrificed millions of innocent people. If Nietzsche, also without introducing
imagine, of course, the real practice of the 20th century, in principle, argued similar
the right of the "strong", then Ibsen in principle denied this right, in whatever forms
it didn't show up.
Unlike Solness and Borkman, Hedda Gabler, the heroine is somewhat more
early play by Ibsen ("Hedda Gabler", 1890), is devoid of a true vocation. But
she has a strong, independent character and, having become accustomed, like a daughter
general, to a rich, aristocratic life, feels deeply
unsatisfied bourgeois situation and the monotonous course of life in the house
her husband - the mediocre scientist Tesman. She seeks to reward herself
heartlessly playing with the fate of other people and trying to achieve, at least at the cost
the greatest cruelty, so that at least something bright and significant happens. A
when she fails to do this, then it begins to seem to her that behind her "everywhere is so
and follows on the heels of the funny and the vulgar," and she commits suicide.
True, Ibsen makes it possible to explain the capricious and reaching to the full
cynicism of Hedda's behavior not only by the features of her character and the history of her
life, but physiological motives - namely, the fact that she is pregnant.
The responsibility of a person to other people is interpreted - with those or
other variations - in the rest of Ibsen's later plays ("Little Eyolf",
1894, and When We Dead Awake, 1898).
Starting with the "Wild Duck" in Ibsen's plays, the
versatility and capacity of images. Less and less lively - in the external sense
this word - becomes a dialogue. Especially in Ibsen's later plays, everything
the pauses between replicas become longer, and the characters more and more often do not
answer each other as much as they talk about their own. Analyticism
the composition is preserved, but for the development of the action it is now not so much important
gradually becoming clear the previous actions of the characters, how many of them are gradually
revealing old feelings and thoughts. In Ibsen's plays, the
symbolism, and it sometimes becomes very complex and creates a perspective,
leading into some obscure, oscillating distance. Sometimes they perform here
strange, fantastic creatures, strange, difficult to explain
events (especially in "Little Eyolf"). Often about late Ibsen in general
is spoken of as a symbolist or neo-romantic.
But the new stylistic features of Ibsen's later plays are organically included in
the general artistic system of his drama in the 70s and 80s. All their symbols
and all that indefinite haze with which they are surrounded is the most important
an integral part of their overall color and emotional structure, gives them
special semantic capacity. In a number of cases, carriers of Ibsen's symbols
are any tactile, extremely concrete objects or
phenomena that are connected by many threads not only with a common idea, but also
with the plot of the play. Particularly indicative in this regard is living on
in the attic in Ekdal's house a wild duck with a wounded wing: it embodies fate
a person whom life has deprived of the opportunity to strive upward, and together with
theme plays an important role in the whole development of the action in the play, which, with a deep
meaning and is called "Wild Duck".
In 1898, eight years before Ibsen's death, the
seventieth birthday of the great Norwegian playwright. His name at that time was
all over the world one of the most famous writers, his plays were staged in
theaters in many countries.
In Russia, Ibsen was one of the "rulers of thoughts" of the progressive youth
starting in the 90s, but especially in the early 1900s. Many productions
Ibsen's plays left a significant mark on the history of Russian theater
art. A great social event was the Moscow Art Theater performance "Enemy
"A Doll's House" in the theater of V. F. Komissarzhevskaya in the Passage - with V. F.
Komissarzhevskaya as Nora. Ibsen's motifs - in particular, motifs from
"Peer Gynt" - clearly sounded in the poetry of A. A. Blok. "Solveig, you
came skiing to me ... "- this is how one of Blok's poems begins.
And as an epigraph to his poem "Retribution" Blok took words from Ibsen's
"The Builder of Solness": "Youth is retribution."
And in the following decades, Ibsen's plays often appear in
repertoire of different theaters around the world. But still the work of Ibsen, starting
has become less popular since the 1920s. However, the traditions of Ibsen
dramaturgy is also very strong in the world literature of the 20th century. At the end of the past and
at the very beginning of our century, playwrights from different countries could
to hear echoes of such features of Ibsen's art as relevance
problems, tension and "subtext" of the dialogue, the introduction of symbols,
organically woven into the specific fabric of the play. Here it is necessary to name first
only B. Shaw and G. Hauptmann, but to some extent A. P. Chekhov, despite
Chekhov's rejection of the general principles of Ibsen's poetics. And since the 1930s
years of the 20th century, Ibsen's principle of analytical
constructing a play. Discovery of prehistory, sinister secrets of the past, without
the disclosure of which, incomprehensibly present, becomes one of the favorite
techniques of both theatrical and film dramaturgy, reaching its apogee in
works depicting - in one form or another - judicial
proceedings. Ibsen's influence - however, most often not direct -
intersects here with the influence of ancient drama.
The tendency of Ibsen's dramaturgy to
maximum concentration of action and to reduce the number of characters, and also
to the maximum layering of the dialogue. And with renewed vigor comes Ibsen's
poetics aimed at revealing the glaring divergence between the beautiful
visibility and internal trouble of the depicted reality.
Ibsen's work.
general characteristics Ibsen's work.
1. His plays are interesting to read: a dynamic plot, intellectual saturation, the sharpest statement of real serious problems.
2. Ibsen had a largely non-classical worldview, he is a rebel in spirit, his favorite heroes are loners, rebels, always going against the majority, striving for independence, freedom from the opinions of other people. Often they aspire to the mountains, to the heights, not to people, but from people (which, by the way, is not typical for Russian literature).
3. One of the most important problems posed in Ibsen's work is the problem of the contradiction between morality and philanthropy. In fact, this is one of the most important contradictions of Christianity, as well as in general of the morality that was characteristic of European society in the 19th century, and even now.
Periods of Ibsen's work. 1) 1849-1874 - romantic. The most significant two plays of this period "Brand" (1865) and "Peer Gynt" (1867), written in verse, huge, both 250 pages each, Ibsen cares little about plausibility in them, and "Peer Gynt" is generally a fairy tale and at the same time a parody of a fairy tale.
Second period of creativity: 1875-1885 - realistic. At this time, Ibsen wrote plays that laid the foundation for a new drama, this name was given to the updated dramaturgy of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which became more intellectual, lyrical and less plot-driven. The main representatives: Ibsen, Chekhov, Shaw, Maeterlinck. The main feature of Ibsen's new drama is intellectuality, in the center of his plays there is always a tense intellectual, ideological dispute, the struggle not only of the characters themselves, but also of worldviews. In Ibsen's realistic plays, analytical composition. In the course of each play, a certain secret is discovered, and more often several secrets, hidden truths, which dramatically turn the original situation around, which contributes to the tension of the plot. The main conflict in these plays by Ibsen is between the prosperous appearance and the rotten, deceitful, deeply dysfunctional essence of modern life. The disclosure of the secret leads to a rethinking, revision, analysis by the hero or heroine of his entire previous life. Therefore, the composition of these plays is called analytical.
A Doll's House (1879) is one of Ibsen's most popular and interesting plays. In it, for the first time, a woman in world literature declared that, in addition to the duties of mother and wife, “there are other, equally sacred duties” - “duties to herself.” The main character Nora stated: “I can no longer be satisfied with what the majority says and what the books say. I need to think about these things myself.” She wants to reconsider everything - both religion and morality. Nora actually asserts the right of an individual to create their own moral rules and ideas about life, different from the generally accepted and traditional ones. That is, Ibsen again affirms the relativity of moral norms.
The Ghosts (1881) is also one of Ibsen's best plays. Some secrets are constantly revealed in it, the characters are constantly discovering something new for themselves, hence the tension. The most important thing in the play is the exposure of traditional Christian morality, which requires from a person, first of all, the fulfillment of duty. Frau Alving calls ghosts obsolete ideas, ideas that no longer correspond to living life, but still rule it out of habit, by tradition. First of all, this is Christian morality, the bearer of which is the highly moral and demanding pastor Manders, who is a bit like Brand. It was to him that the young Fru Alving once ran, after a year of marriage, she learned with horror about the vices of her husband, for whom she was given out without her desire. She loved the pastor, and he loved her, she wanted to live with him, but he severely sent her to her lawful husband with the words "your duty is to humbly carry the cross placed on you by the higher will." The pastor considers that his act the greatest victory over himself, over the sinful desire for his own happiness. Thus, in this play, the confrontation between morality and humanity is most clearly reflected, where the author is already completely on the side of humanity.
Third period: 1886-1899. A period with a touch of decadence and symbolism. The plays of this period retain signs of a new drama, but something strange is added, sometimes painfully perverted, sometimes almost mystical, sometimes the characters are mentally abnormal, often immoral people, but described without condemnation. These are "Rosmersholm" (1886), "Woman from the Sea" (1888), "Little Eyolf" (1894), "When we, the dead, awaken" (1899). They are interesting, smart, deep by design, but there is too much talk, few bright events, they do not have true Ibsenian tension.
The ideological result of Ibsen's work as a whole. Ibsen's plays clearly showed (and most clearly "Brand") the inevitable inconsistency of the moral system of the classical worldview. Absolutely consistent adherence to traditional moral precepts sooner or later turns against a particular person, destroys his happiness. Morality is inhuman. One moral standard contradicts another. This proves at least that there are no absolute, eternal moral values and ideals, everything is relative, including religious commandments, without compromises, deviations from these commandments in real life is indispensable.
Moreover, Ibsen, in some of his later plays, comes to the conclusion that a person has the right to overcome traditional morality, because the most important thing in a person’s life is to be happy, and not to fulfill a duty, not to fulfill a vocation, not to serve some lofty idea.
Ibsen's work connects centuries - in the literal sense of the word. Its origins are in the ending, pre-revolutionary 18th century, in Schiller's tyranny and in the Rousseauist appeal to nature and to ordinary people. And the dramaturgy of the mature and late Ibsen, for all its deepest connection with contemporary life, also outlines the essential features of the art of the 20th century - its condensedness, experimentalism, and multilayeredness. For the poetry of the 20th century, according to one of the foreign researchers, the motif of the saw is very characteristic, in particular, with its gnashing, with its sharp teeth. In his unfinished memoirs, Ibsen, describing his childhood, emphasizes the impression that the continuous screech of sawmills made on him, hundreds of which worked from morning to evening in his hometown of Skien. "When I later read about the guillotine," writes Ibsen, "I always thought of these sawmills." And this heightened sense of dissonance, which Ibsen the child showed, subsequently affected the fact that he saw and captured in his work flashy dissonances where others saw wholeness and harmony. At the same time, Ibsen's portrayal of disharmony is by no means disharmonic. The world does not fall apart in his works into separate, unrelated fragments. The form of Ibsen's drama is strict, clear, and collected. The dissonance of the world is revealed here in plays that are uniform in their construction and coloring. The bad organization of life is expressed in excellently organized works. Ibsen showed himself to be a master of organizing complex material already in his youth. Oddly enough, in his homeland, Ibsen was initially recognized as the first among all Norwegian writers, not as a playwright, but as a poet - the author of poems "in case": songs for student holidays, prologues to plays, etc. Young Ibsen knew how to combine in such poems a clear development of thought with genuine emotionality, using chains of images, largely stereotyped for that time, but sufficiently updated in the context of the poem. Mindful of G. Brandes' appeal to Scandinavian writers to "put problems on the table," Ibsen at the end of the 19th century was often called a problem-setter. But the roots of "problematic" art in Ibsen's work are very deep! The movement of thought has always been extremely important for the construction of his works, organically growing in his plays from the development of the inner world of the characters. And this feature also anticipated important trends in the world dramaturgy of the 20th century.
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V. Admoni. Henrik Ibsen and his career
Henrik Ibsen. Biography and review of creativity
Henrik Ibsen was not only a great Norwegian playwright, but also the creator of a new socio-psychological drama, who had a strong influence on world drama.
G. Ibsen was born in the Norwegian seaside town of Skien in the family of a shipowner. In 1836, Ibsen's father went bankrupt. Not only the property status of the family changed dramatically, but also the attitude of those around them. Ibsen was only 8 years old, but he keenly felt this change. He studied at school, impressing teachers with his abilities, especially in literature and drawing, but he did not even have to think about entering the university. A 15-year-old boy was faced with the question of a piece of bread. He began working as an apothecary's apprentice in the nearby town of Grimstead.
The monotonous life in Grimstead lasted 6 years - from 1844 to 1850. Receiving a penny and fulfilling his duties, the young pharmacist gave his leisure to his favorite thing - literature. He read a lot and wrote poetry. In his notebooks there were epigrams and caricatures of the local rich and officials - they spread, creating influential enemies for him, and attracted the hearts of progressive youth to him. The popularity of the young assistant pharmacist grew and clearly no longer corresponded to his modest position in the city. His rebellious mood especially intensified in connection with the revolution of 1848. “Under the noise of great international storms, for my part, I fought with a small society, to which I was chained by the will of circumstances and worldly conditions,” Ibsen later wrote.
The revolutionary nature of the young Ibsen was combined with patriotic, national liberation sentiments. He reacted violently to the events of the 1848 revolution in various countries, especially to the Hungarian revolution, to which he dedicated the poem "Magyars".
Then, 20 years old, Ibsen wrote his first drama - Catiline (1848-1849).
In Catiline, Ibsen took little account of history. The true rebel, Catiline (II century BC), who opposed the Roman Senate, was guided only by personal, selfish goals, tried to become the dictator of Rome. Catiline in Ibsen's play rebels against the senate's self-interest and dreams of the revival of the ancient greatness of the Roman Republic. However, Ibsen not only idealizes Catiline: he shows his action against Rome as a tragic mistake, because the followers of Catiline expect only enrichment and power from the victory of their leader.
In this weak youthful tragedy, the leading theme of Ibsen's work has already been outlined - the rebellion of a strong, lonely personality and her death.
Almost simultaneously with "Katya l another" was written a one-act play "Bogatyr Kurgan". This play about the ancient Norse Vikings was accepted by a theater in Christiania with some success. Ibsen's path as a playwright was begun. In Christiania, Ibsen attended private preparatory courses for the university and at the same time worked in the radical press. During this period, he became close to the Norwegian labor movement, taught at a workers' Sunday school, and contributed to the "Newspaper of Workers' Associations". He also took part in revolutionary student demonstrations. Being among the public at meetings of the Storting, where at that time the liberal opposition, together with the government party, was betraying national interests, Ibsen was imbued with contempt for this false talking shop and wrote a satirical play, The Norm, or Love of a Politician. Under names borrowed from Bellini's popular opera Norma, he portrayed the corrupt politicians of Norway.
In 1851, the 24-year-old playwright received a flattering invitation from the famous musician Ole Bull, who had recently founded the National Norwegian Theater in Bergen. Ibsen was asked to actually head the theater, to become its artistic director, director and playwright. Ibsen spent 5 years in Bergen. He turned out to be an outstanding director. Every year he created a new play for the Bergen theater. In 1857 he returned to Christiania again.
The first period of creativity
The first period of Ibsen's work (1848-1864) is usually called national-romantic. His main theme during this period is Norway's struggle for independence and the glorification of its heroic past. Ibsen's method remains romantic - he is attracted by exceptional, powerful characters, strong passions, unusual conflicts.
During this time, Ibsen wrote (except for "Katilina" and "Bogatyrsky Kurgan") seven plays: "Ivayova Night" (1853), "Fru Inger from Estrot" (1854), "Feast in Solhaug" (1855), "Olaf Lilienkrans" (1856), The Warriors in Helgeland (1857), The Comedy of Love (1862) and The Struggle for the Throne (1863). All of these plays (with the exception of The Comedy of Love) are either historical in nature (Fru Inger of Estrot, The Struggle for the Throne) or are based on Scandinavian legends.
In the plays of the first period, whole heroic natures are active, which Ibsen finds in the past of Norway. Ibsen depicts the collapse of a strong personality if she chose a criminal or selfish path.
Particularly characteristic in this respect is the historical drama Fru Inger of Estrot. The action takes place in the 16th century, during the era of the struggle of the Norwegian people against Danish rule. The proud, domineering Fr Inger, the owner of huge estates, could lead the fight for the freedom of Norway and even made such an oath in her youth, but did not keep it: she preferred to fight for the life and bright future of her illegitimate son and for this she made a number of compromises with enemies homeland. Trying to clear the way for her son to the throne, she kills a young man who has stopped in her house, another contender for the throne. But thanks to a tragic misunderstanding, it is her son, whom she has not seen since early childhood, who turns out to be the victim.
The words of Fru Inger after the murder she committed (when she still does not know the terrible truth) sound like a daring challenge: “Who won - God or me?” Of course, a woman of the Middle Ages could not utter such words, but Ibsen does not put a religious meaning into the word “god” here: it denotes only those requirements of goodness and humanity that a person should follow. Fru Inger is defeated because she did not follow them. Her path naturally leads to "crime and complete collapse.
One of the brightest and original plays of the first period - "Warriors in Helgeland" - is entirely based on the materials of the famous "Volsunga Saga".
Remaining a romantic in the first period of his work, Ibsen was significantly influenced by the early Scandinavian romantics - primarily the Danish poet Elenschleger, who also turned to the materials of the sagas. But Ibsen was well acquainted with Western European romanticism on a larger scale. There is no doubt about the influence on him (in the early period) of Hugo's romantic dramas.
Fight for the throne
The most significant play of Ibsen of the first period of his work - "The Struggle for the Throne" - is marked by the influence of Shakespeare. It is written in the spirit of Shakespeare's chronicles and imbued with the same pathos of the unification of the country. The action takes place in the XIII century, when Norway was the scene of feudal civil strife. Each noble family, each region put forward its own king. The positive hero of Ibsen is the young king Haakon Haakonsen, a protege of the Birkebeiner party. Birke-beiners ("bast shoes") were the most democratic party in medieval Norway, uniting peasants and small nobles and opposing the power of large feudal lords. The victory of the Birkebeiners over the feudal-church party of the Baglers explains why serfdom was never introduced in Norway.
The hero is chosen by Ibsen successfully. Of course, he somewhat idealizes the historical Haakon, but he was indeed one of the most prominent rulers of medieval Norway. Ibsen shows Haakon's struggle for the throne with Jarl Skule." Haakon is guided by the dream of the good of the people and the unification of Norway. This "great royal idea" of Haakon was beyond the power of his opponent, although Jarl Skule is also an outstanding person.
The victory of Haakon with his progressive historical mission over Skule is accomplished naturally and naturally. Haakon is shown as a whole and pure nature, who knows no doubts and hesitations, as a person who is confident in his rightness. Jarl Skula lacks that confidence. He doubts, hesitates. He is trying to steal, to ascribe to himself the "royal thought" of Haakon. But someone else's thought cannot be appropriated for a long time. Jarle Skule voluntarily dooms himself to death.
The image of Bishop Nicholas, one of the main characters of the drama, is very interesting. This is a disgusting figure of an intriguer, inciting endless strife in the country, guided by the principle of "divide, rule." Even dying, he tries to set in motion a new intrigue, to kindle new strife. In the image of the bishop, Ibsen reflected the anti-people role that the church often played in Norway, and the spirit of discord and petty selfish calculations that was ruining Norway.
In 1864 Ibsen left his homeland. There were two main reasons for this departure.
In 1864, the so-called Prussian-Danish war broke out, Prussian troops invaded Denmark. Outraged, Ibsen responded to this event with the poem "Brother in Need", in which he called * Norway and Sweden to help Denmark, to repel German aggression. However, the Swedish and Norwegian governments limited themselves to general excuses and promises and left Denmark to its fate. Liberals and radicals, who played a large role in the Norwegian Storting, also showed indifference to the fate of Denmark. Ibsen indignantly saw the growth of German imperialism and militarism and the danger it posed to the Scandinavian countries. He understood that the indifference of Norwegian politicians bordered on a betrayal of national interests.
The second reason that forced Ibsen to leave Norway was the fierce persecution that he was subjected to in connection with his "Comedy of Love", which castigated the Norwegian bourgeoisie.
Ibsen spent about 30 years abroad, in Italy and Germany. He returned only in 1891 and was enthusiastically received by his compatriots. During this time, he became a world-famous writer. But he remained true to the national Norwegian theme and never broke ties with his homeland. He followed from afar all the social and cultural events in Norway, carried on a lively correspondence with his friends who had left him. In sultry, sunny Rome, Ibsen wrote his "Brand" - the first drama that received a worldwide response - about a poor Norwegian village in the Far North, about a gloomy pastor's house sheltered under an overhanging glacier. He wrote about Norwegian peasants, merchants, intellectuals. It was thanks to the fact that he retained national specifics in his dramas that he was able to achieve worldwide recognition.
Second period of creativity
The second period of Ibsen's work (1864-1884) should be considered realistic. This is the period of the highest flowering of his dramaturgy, the most merciless and sharp denunciation of bourgeois reality. Departing from ancient heroic tales and the distant past of Norway, he now turns in most of his plays to the present, to the bourgeois world, always ready to kill and poison disinterested fighters.
During this period, Ibsen wrote eight dramas: "Brand" (1865), "Peer Gynt" (1866), "Union of Youth" (1869), "Caesar and the Galilean" (1873), "Pillars of Society" (1877), "Puppet house" (1879), "Ghosts" (1881) and "Enemy of the People" (1882).
"Brand" and "Peer Gynt" are plays that are internally connected with each other, philosophical and psychological, solving one and the same problem. They raise the question of the vocation and moral character of a person, of his appointment on earth and duty to people. These are transitional pieces. They seem to complete the first, romantic period of Ibsen's work and anticipate the second, realistic one. In "Brand" we see a romantically extraordinary figure of the protagonist, colorful secondary images, gloomy landscapes; "Peer Gynt" is closely connected with folk art, with the world of fairy tales, a number of episodes in it are permeated with romantic irony; both plays are saturated with symbolism. All this makes them related to romanticism. At the same time, Ibsen satirically depicts their officials, the clergy and the bourgeoisie, gives a number of realistic scenes and typical generalizations. This brings them closer to realism. Both of these plays created worldwide fame for Ibsen.
Brand
In the drama Brand, Ibsen depicts the young pastor Brand, who took a parish in the most remote and abandoned corner of Northern Norway, where he was once born and spent his childhood. Brand is an adamant, fiery nature (the very name Brand means "fire"). He smashes bourgeois society with the ardor of a biblical prophet, but he fights not for religious ideals, but for the high and whole moral character of man. To be oneself, to follow one's vocation - such, in his opinion, is the main duty of a person. "All or nothing" is Brand's favorite slogan. All or nothing a person should give to his life ideal.
Brand first encounters the spirit of money-grubbing in the face of his mother. For the sake of money, she once suppressed her feelings for a poor farmhand, she subordinated her whole life to the power of money. Feeling the approach of death, she clings to Brand as the sole heir to her fortune and as the pastor who should give her absolution. Brand refuses her absolution, as she does not agree to his demand: to give away all her property and die in poverty.
Further, Brand himself makes heavy sacrifices to his vocation. The doctor threatens him with the death of his only child if he is not taken south from a gloomy northern village, from a house where the sun does not shine. Brand refuses to leave, to leave his parish, where he just managed to awaken a thirst for good in the souls of people. The child is dying. The meek, selfless Agnes, Brand's wife, also dies, unable to bear the death of her son.
In the last acts, Brand is confronted by the state in the person of the local police officer and with the official church in the person of the head priest. He rejects orders and promotions with which they try to buy him and refuses to consecrate the new church, which he himself built. This church no longer satisfies him, just like religion itself. He indignantly discovers that by his pastoral word he actually served the bourgeois state. With a fiery speech, Brand captivates his parishioners, poor peasants, away from the village and the church and leads them to the mountains, towards an unknown feat. He dreams of a fruitful revolution that will change the whole life of Norway, turn the very work into joy, return to people the lost purity and integrity. Brand says to the people: Through the mountains with the whole crowd
We, like a whirlwind, will pass along the edge,
Breaking the soul of the trap,
Cleansing, uplifting
Destroying old rubbish -
Fractionality, stupidity, laziness, deceit ...
To create a bright temple from the state of Eternal Life!
"This call borders on the revolutionary - this is how it was perceived, for example, in Russia in 1906 during the production of "Brand" by the Moscow Art Theater.
A crowd of fishermen and peasants, listening to Brand, burst into cries:
Down with all those who pressed us,
Who sucked blood from our veins!
However, G. V. Plekhanov, in his article on Ibsen, rightly condemns Brand's activities and appeals for their extreme vagueness. Plekhanov writes: “Brand is an irreconcilable enemy of all opportunism, and from this side he is very similar to a revolutionary, but only from one side ... but where is the enemy that must be “strike with all force”? For what exactly is it necessary to fight with him not for life, but for death? What is the "everything" that Branda opposes "nothing" in his fervent sermon? Brand himself does not know this.
Brand leads the crowd into the mountains. He cannot show the people the goal, the enthusiasm of the crowd is extinguished. Plekhanov says that in this journey up to the glaciers, Brand strongly resembles Don Quixote, and the angry remarks of the crowd resemble the grumblings of Sancho Lanza. In the end, the crowd leaves Brand, beating him with stones, and returns to the village, led by their former "leaders", the probst and the vogt. Vogt manages to attract a hungry crowd of fishermen with the good news that shoals of herring have washed ashore. But this is just a lucky guess. This is not a “miracle of God,” as the probst has already explained, but “a hastily concocted nonsense.” So Ibsen shows the power of material interests over the starving workers, as well as the readiness of the bourgeois government and the clergy for any deception.
Brand is left alone - in the company of a crazy girl Gerd. Instead of the “church of life”, where he called the people, he sees only a snowy church in front of him, a cursed place in the mountains, which the peasants consider the dwelling place of the devil.
Brand dies under an avalanche caused by a shot from the insane Gerd. At the last moment, he hears a voice like a thunderclap: “God is Deus Caritatis.” These words, as it were, cross out the entire life path of Brand, who was never guided by mercy and sacrificed all his loved ones to duty.
Not surprisingly, in the huge critical literature devoted to Brand, this ending has received special attention. Various hypotheses have been put forward. So, some critics believed that the final words were not spoken by the voice of God at all, but by the “spirit of compromise” - an evil spirit that tempted Brand all his life and now poisons his last minutes. Others, on the contrary, saw in this ending Ibsen's condemnation of his hero.
In fact, we have before us a complex and contradictory solution to the problem, the desire to raise this question in all its tragic hopelessness. The voice proclaiming the law of mercy could not be a false voice for the humanist Ibsen. It is not for nothing that the same words are uttered in the third act by the old doctor, Brand's ideological opponent. Walking at the first call to the sick through the mountains and gorges, doing his daily business without noise, the doctor reproaches Brand for lack of mercy.
But Ibsen does not condemn Brand, he admires him to the end. The conflict between severe duty and mercy seems to Ibsen insoluble.
However, Plekhanov in his article shows that often in Ibsen this conflict turns out to be far-fetched. "Brand's demands are inhuman precisely because they are meaningless," writes Plekhanov. So, if Brand's conflict with his dying mother or his decision to stay in the northern region, despite the illness of the child, is understandable, then the cruelty with which he treats his wife after the death of the child is completely incomprehensible. He forbids her to cry about him, takes away her children's things and gives them to the beggar, takes away the cap that she tried to hide on her chest. With this, he, as it were, frees Agnes from illusions, but from this she dies.
Plekhanov rightly says that only a man who does not have specific ideals and goals could so senselessly reproach a woman for her manifestation of maternal grief. Plekhanov believes that a real fighter for a big, concrete idea, a revolutionary, on the contrary, would show warm sympathy and attention to an orphaned mother.
Ibsen's characteristic individualism comes through very clearly in this play. Its true meaning becomes clearer when compared with the next play, "Peer Gynt." Throughout his entire work, Ibsen draws individualists of two types: lonely fighters for the happiness and moral purity of mankind and narcissistic egoists, striving to identify and affirm only their own personality. That is the difference between Brand and Peer Gynt. Ibsen irrevocably condemns egoistic individualists.
Peer Gynt
The dramatic poem "Peer Gynt" (1866) is a very complex play that combines various motifs and genres - a dramatized folk tale, a socio-satirical comedy, a political farce and a philosophical drama. Her hero is a cheerful and dissolute village boy who has done many troubles in his native village, a braggart and dreamer who dreams of wealth and glory. Peer Gynt is the exact opposite of Brand. This is a narcissistic egoist who lives for personal pleasures. Brand's stern motto: "Be yourself"—Per modified it, adding only one word: "Be satisfied with yourself."
And at the same time, Per is not without a peculiar charm. He is handsome and cheerful, in love with folk tales, and when he fantasizes,. attributing to himself fabulous feats, one feels a real poet in him. When a crowd of drunk guys mocks his dreams or his poverty, we guess in him the traits of an unjustly persecuted hero of a folk tale, who sooner or later will achieve brilliant luck. He passionately loves his mother and the modest girl Solveig. At the time of his mother's death, he, unlike Brand, managed to ease her last moments, to lull her with a fairy tale.
All these charming and poetic features are explained by the fact that Ibsen took his hero from folk legends: in the Norwegian villages they told about the boastful and successful Pere Gynt, who lived in the 18th century. Ibsen used both these oral legends and Norwegian tales collected by Asbjørnsen. The image of Per is covered with the breath of a fairy tale and northern nature, the freedom-loving spirit of the Norwegian peasantry. No wonder Peer Gynt seems so attractive at first.
But Per is gradually losing ties with his native nature and simple, modest people, losing his peasant and national features. His unscrupulousness is shown first in an allegorical-fairy-tale plan, in an episode of his stay with the trolls. Dreaming of becoming a king - at least in the underground kingdom of the trolls, he agrees to marry the daughter of the Dovre grandfather, the king of the trolls, agrees to renounce daylight and his human essence, and even put on his own tail. He protests only when they want to gouge out his eyes. At the same time, we must not forget that the fabulous images of trolls here acquire a grotesque character, the features of a socio-political caricature.
Secondarily, Per's unscrupulousness is symbolized in the form of a strange monster, the Curve, with which Per enters into single combat. Both the meeting with Kriva and the stay with the trolls were taken by Ibsen from folk tales, but there Peer Gynt remained the winner. Here he capitulates at every turn. Curve's insidious advice to "get around" becomes Per's life principle, keeping him from making fundamental decisions.
Peer Gynt leaves for America and becomes a slave trader. The most vile forms of commerce do not repulse him; he imports black slaves into America, idols and Christian missionaries into China. We again meet Peer Gynt on the African coast, when he decided to devote the rest of his life to recreation and entertainment; Ibsen introduces us to the friends and freeloaders of the wealthy Per. These are the Englishman Mr. Cotton, the Frenchman Monsieur Ballon, the German von Eberkrpf and the Swede Trumpeterstrole. Before us are bright caricature images. Yes, and Peer Gynt himself finally acquires the satirical features of a self-satisfied and hypocritical tradesman. The hangers-on humiliate themselves in every possible way in front of Peer Gynt, praising his mind and greatness, but in the end they steal his yacht and money. Robbed many times, having endured all sorts of misadventures on land and at sea, the aged Peer Gynt returns to his homeland. Here comes the hour of reckoning for a uselessly lived life. Ibsen introduces a number of allegorical images symbolizing Per's despair and spiritual emptiness. In the desert area, dry leaves, broken straws, some kind of balls come across under his feet. All these are thoughts that Peer Gynt did not think of, deeds that he did not carry out, songs that he did not compose. Per did not bring any benefit to the world, he did not value the name of a person. Finally, Per meets the Buttonmaker, who intends to take his soul and melt it down with the others as corrupted material. Per is shocked, most of all he is afraid of losing his "I", although he already realized how insignificant this "I" is.
In a moment of near-death despair, he is saved by Solveig, whom he left in his youth and forgot. She kept the memory of him: all her life, until old age, she waited for him in a forest hut. Those poetic features that were in the young Per were able to win the girl’s heart forever, he awakened great love in her soul. “You made my life a wonderful song!” - tells him the old, blinded Solveig. Peer Gynt dies in her arms, to her lullaby. He is saved from complete oblivion, his life, it turns out, was not in vain. Motherland and connection with it, youthful memories, maternal and conjugal love - these are the powerful forces that can save even a dying person.
The charming image of Solveig, the richness of fantasy and the close connection with the folk tale, as well as the deep philosophical meaning of the drama, attracted everyone's attention to Peer Gynt. The famous Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg wrote music for Peer Gynt, which is still very popular.
Caesar and the Galilean
For seven years, Ibsen worked on
philosophical and historical play, which he himself called the "world drama" - "Caesar and the Galilean." It was completed in 1873. Its action unfolds in the Byzantine Empire in the 4th century. The protagonist of the drama is the Emperor Julian Apostate*, who tried to restore paganism in Greece and Rome after Christianity had already become the dominant religion.
Ibsen did not regard Julian as the villain that the Christian chroniclers portrayed him to be. He treats him, rather, with pity and sympathy. Ibsen himself admired ancient culture, its humanistic character. His Julian turns to the pagan past, yearning for beauty and happiness, outraged by Christian fanaticism and the struggle of religious sects. However, Julian is wrong and is defeated as he tries to reverse history. The victory of Christianity over paganism in Ibsen's drama is the victory of a new historical stage over the previous one. Julian's mistake was that he did not guess the ideas of his era, he tried to interfere with them. But Ibsen does not consider Christianity to be eternal. Julian's teacher Maxim the mystic expresses the idea of three kingdoms that should replace each other. The first was the kingdom of the flesh, or paganism; it was succeeded by the kingdom of the spirit, or Christianity. But the time will come for the third kingdom, the kingdom of man. Man is the only god that exists in the universe, in nature there is no one higher than man. In the third kingdom, the flesh will not be cursed, and the human spirit will reach unprecedented power. In this bright future, man will finally be happy.
These dreams of Maximus the mystic, with which Ibsen sympathizes, reflected the idealistic theories of the 19th century, primarily the teachings of Hegel. But, undoubtedly, for Ibsen himself, the coming third kingdom, the kingdom of man, is that just social system that should replace the bourgeois era.
In the huge historical drama "Caesar and the Galilean" Ibsen gave an unusually wide background, many minor characters, managed to recreate the spirit and color of the era. He learned these realistic techniques from Shakespeare.
realistic plays
In those same years, Ibsen finally moved on to creating topical social dramas with a deep psychological disclosure of characters. Hatred for the bourgeoisie, for its vulgarity, cruelty and hypocrisy becomes the defining mood of Ibsen during this period.
Once upon a time, the young man Ibsen warmly welcomed the bourgeois revolution of 1848 and developed as a writer under its influence. But his mature creativity fell on those years when "the revolutionary spirit of bourgeois democracy was already dying (in Europe) and the revolutionary character of the socialist proletariat had not yet matured"*. Deep disappointment in bourgeois democracy, in bourgeois revolutionary spirit permeates Ibsen's realistic dramas. He does not tire of stigmatizing the bourgeoisie, which skillfully uses revolutionary and progressive slogans for its own selfish ends. In his best plays, clever businessmen and selfish people act, putting on the masks of altruists, disinterested public figures, political fighters, and Ibsen rips off these magnificent masks from them. Hell-
Vokat Stensgaard (the play "Union of Youth") demagogically shouts about his revolutionary spirit, about his readiness to fight against the "money bag", but in reality he is only interested in a place in the Storting and a rich bride.
Consul Bernic is considered a progressive figure and a highly moral person (the play "Pillars of Society"), but he began his career by slandering a close friend and dumping his youthful sins on him. Under the guise of concern for the benefit of society, he achieves the construction of a railway line not where it is really needed, buys up plots adjacent to it in order to cash in on them, sends poorly repaired but insured ships to sail, dooming their crews and passengers to death. So are his friends, merchants and shipowners, with whom he shares his profits. “Here they are, our pillars of society! ” one of the heroines of the drama exclaims bitterly.
The bourgeois city fathers in Enemy of the People refuse to rebuild the water supply network or close the resort, which uses contaminated water, because both promise them losses.
At the same time, Ibsen's criticism becomes more merciless and deeper with each new play. No wonder he wrote to Bjornstjerne Bjornson in one of his letters in 1867: “I feel how my strength is growing in an angry outburst. War is war!.. I'll try
be a photographer. I will take up the image of my age and my contemporaries there, in the North; I will bring them out one by one ... I will not spare even the child in the womb - neither the thought, nor the mood hidden in the word, nor any person deserving the honor of being noted.
To this world, Ibsen was unable to oppose ordinary people, Norwegian workers. But it is characteristic that much later, in 1885, in a speech to the Tronjem workers, he said that he did not pin any hopes on modern democracy (meaning bourgeois democracy) and that he expected true nobility of character and a genuine transformation of society from the workers. In Ibsen's dramas themselves, there are no images of advanced, conscious workers, fighters for the reorganization of society. In Ibsen's plays, lone rebels from an intelligent environment, deeply offended by bourgeois society (Dr.
However, in this opposition of a noble, rebellious personality and a criminal, hypocritical society, Ibsen achieved great strength and depth. Engels explains the peculiarities of the Norwegian national character that Ibsen was able to find his protesting heroes in the petty-bourgeois environment. Emphasizing that the Norwegian peasant “never was a serf” and that the connection between Ibsen’s work and this love of freedom of the Norwegian people is undeniable, Engels writes: “The Norwegian petty bourgeois is the son of a free peasant, and as a result of this he is a real person compared to the degraded German tradesman. And whatever the shortcomings of, for example, Ibsen's dramas, they depict us, although a small and middle-bourgeois, but completely incommensurable with the German world - a world in which people still have character and initiative and act, although often from the point of view of foreign concepts it is quite strange, but independently.
Dollhouse
Of Ibsen's plays of the second, realistic-,-v) period, The Doll's House (The Burrow) has enjoyed the greatest success to this day. Falsehood and hypocrisy pervade the home life of the Gelmers. Meek, always lively Nora, a tender mother and wife, seems to enjoy the boundless adoration and cares of her husband; but in reality she remains for him only a doll, a toy. She is not allowed to have her own views, judgments, tastes; surrounding his wife with an atmosphere of teasing and sugary jokes, and sometimes severe reproaches for "squandering", lawyer Gelmer never talks to her about anything serious. Gelmer's worries about his wife are ostentatious in nature: this is petty guardianship, permeated with the consciousness of his own superiority. Gelmer does not even suspect that in their marriage the most difficult trials and worries have already fallen to the lot of his wife. In order to save her husband, who fell ill with tuberculosis in the first year of marriage, in order to take him to Italy on the advice of doctors, Nora secretly borrows money from a moneylender and subsequently, at the cost of hard work, pays this money. But according to the laws of that time, which humiliated a woman, she could not borrow money without the guarantee of a man. Nora put under the bill the name of her seriously ill father, who allegedly vouched for her ability to pay, that is, from the point of view of bourgeois justice, she forged the bill.
Daughter and conjugal love pushed Nora to her "crime" against the law.
The usurer Krogstad further terrorizes Nora, threatens her with prison, demands a place in the bank, the director of which is her husband. Mortally afraid of the exposure that threatens her, Nora is forced to portray a happy woman, a cheerful doll. The play is built on this profound contrast between the outward behavior and the true feelings of the heroine. Nora is still hoping for a "miracle". It seems to her that her husband, a strong and noble man, will save her, /; support in trouble. Instead, the lawyer Gelmer, having received 1/2 of the letter from the blackmailer Krogstad, falls into a rage, lashes out at his wife with rude reproaches, predicts a terrible, humiliating life in his house. From his point of view, she, the criminal, he will forbid her to communicate with children so that she cannot / can corrupt them. At this moment, Krogstad, under the influence of / the woman he loves, pays Nora's promissory note and renounces his intricately this unexpected salvation restores peace of mind<ше только Гельмеру, ничтожному эгоисту. Он снова осыпает Нору ласковыми именами, она снова его куколка и птичка. Нора прерывает этот поток нежностей неожид данным предложением сесть и спокойно обсудить, что же про-\ изошло. С резкой прямотой и суровостью она характеризует! ту бездну, которая обнаружилась между ними, ту ложную \ основу, на которой был построен их брак. Это не был союз двух равных, любящих людей; их брак был простым сожительством. Так Ибсен и его героиня срывают с буржуазной семьи все сентиментальные и идиллические покровы. Нора считает, что, прежде чем быть женой и матерью, она должна стать человеком. Она уходит от мужа, покидает его и троих детей. Громко раздается стук захлопнувшейся за ней наружной двери.
Not surprisingly, this ending provoked fierce attacks on Ibsen. His heroine was accused of frivolity and deceit, he himself was accused of trying to slander the marriage and destroy the family. Many considered the end of the drama simply unnatural, they argued that no mother would leave her children. The artists refused to play the "monstrous mother" Nora. At the insistence of one of them, a famous German actress, Ibsen wrote the second ending: at the last moment, Gelmer opens the door to the nursery, Nora sees her babies and stays. However, Ibsen restored the former end at the first opportunity.
ghosts
The second play about the spiritual rebellion of women
china, about her rebellion against false morality - "Ghosts" (1881). There is an inherent connection between "Ghosts" and "A Doll's House". Ibsen, as it were, answers his opponents, who argued that for the sake of children or for fear of public opinion, a woman should stay with a man worthy of contempt. Ibsen shows the tragedy of the woman who remained.
In her youth, Mrs. Alving was given away by her relatives, married to a rich man who turned out to be a drunkard and a debauchee. She left him for the man she loved, the young pastor Manders, but he, a cautious minister of religion and common morality, "" forced her to return to her husband. All her life, Mrs. Alving lived with an unloved person, managed his affairs, hid his vices from those around him, fought for his good name. She removed her son from the bad influence of his father, raised him away from herself and from her homeland, and, at first glance, she achieved a lot: the young man Oswald became a good man, a promising artist. But the fatal mistake of Mrs. Alving, who tried to save the family on a false basis, made itself felt many years later: Oswald received from his father a hereditary disease that leads him to dementia.
The end of the play is deeply tragic - the sick Oswald babbles senselessly: "Mother, give me the sun!", and the mother, distraught with grief, decides the terrible question - whether to doom her son to this half-animal vegetation or give him a lethal dose of poison, as she promised earlier. This question remains open. Ibsen leaves it to the audience to decide. Once again, as in The Burrow, but with even greater tragedy, he shows into what abysses of despair the bourgeois law of indissoluble marriage based on mutual inequality pushes a woman.
Enemy of the people
In the next play, Enemy of the People (1883), the protest of the protagonist no longer acquires a family-ethical, but a social character. The spa doctor Stockman, a naive and meek, but very principled person, learns that the healing waters of the spa are systematically contaminated by sewage. It is necessary to temporarily close the balneary and rebuild the water supply network. But the city bosses in Tyava with Vogt, Dr. Stockmann's brother, do not want to give up their profits, to postpone the operation of the resort for a while. They try to shut up the troubled doctor. They hound him, organize public opinion against him, use the corrupt press for this, declare him an enemy of the people.
A crowd of petty proprietors, connected by their monetary interests with the prosperity of the resort, pounce on him, break the windows in his house. He is fired from the service, his daughter, a teacher, is also denied a job, his younger children are forbidden to attend school, the householder demands to vacate the apartment. But persecution and harassment cannot break Dr. Stockman. Alone, with only the support of his family and an old friend, he continues the fight.
It is not surprising that this play caused a strong reaction from the audience during its production. In Russia in 1901 it was staged by the Moscow Art Theater with Stanislavsky in the title role and was perceived as revolutionary. This was facilitated by the very historical situation. There has just been a beating of a student demonstration in St. Petersburg.
However, the inconsistency characteristic of Ibsen was sharply manifested precisely in Doctor Stockman. The heroic image of the doctor did not accidentally receive a double interpretation. Some perceived him as a revolutionary, others as a Nietzschean, an individualist who despises the crowd.
In his struggle, Dr. Stockmann not only does not rely on the masses of the people, but expresses his conviction in the power of loneliness. “The strongest person in the world is the one who is the most alone,” he says at the end of the play. Not limited to this declaration of individualism, Dr. Stockman directly contrasts the crowd with loners, fighters for new ideas, "aristocrats of the spirit."
All this produces a strange, anti-social impression. It is not for nothing that GV Plekhanov writes in his article on Ibsen: "The doctor agrees to reactionary nonsense." However, one should not forget that Stockman does not include representatives of the ruling classes among the aristocrats of the spirit. He calls his brother, the burgomaster, "the most disgusting plebeian." At the end of the play, he decides to create a school for the education of truly free and noble people. In this school, in addition to his two boys, he takes street children, the children of the poor, deprived of the opportunity to study at school. “There are such heads among them!” exclaims Dr. Stockman. In this one feels an instinctive search for ways to the people.
Third period of creativity
The third period of Ibsen's work (1884-1900) covers eight plays: The Wild Duck (1884), Rosmersholm (1886), The Woman from the Sea (1888), Hedda Gabler (1890), Solnes the Builder ( 1892), "Little Eyolf" (1894), "Jun Gabriel Workman" (1896) and "When We Dead Awake" (1899).
During this period, Ibsen's psychologism deepens, sometimes acquiring a somewhat sophisticated character. His humanism, his active pity for people, is also deepening. No wonder touching images of children appear in his work, dying from selfishness and indifference of adults (the teenage girl Gedwig in The Wild Duck, little Eyolf in the drama of the same name).
The question of mercy, which has always worried Ibsen, but has not yet been finally resolved in Brand, is now being resolved in the spirit of humanism. It is no coincidence that Ibsen gives a tragicomic version of Brand's image in his drama The Wild Duck. This is Gregers Werle. If Brand sought to re-educate the whole society, to open its eyes to the lies of social relations, then Gregers Werle is busy with the moral re-education of his friend, Hjalmar Ekdal. He is trying to open his eyes to the lies of his family relationships, to make him a principled and honest person. He does not succeed in this, since Hjalmar Ekdal is only a narcissistic egoist. But along the way, Gregers Werle brings people a lot of evil. Ekdal's wife, from whom he mainly saves his friend, turns out to be in fact a kind and hardworking woman, a good mother and wife. Gregers Werle causes her new sorrows by his interference. As a result of this intervention, Gedwig, her daughter, rejected by her stepfather Hjalmar, whom she considered her father and loved passionately, takes her own life. With the death of a child, Hjalmar Ekdal pays for his selfishness, and Gregers Werle for his misplaced zeal in matters of morality.
In the increased humanism is the undoubted merit of Ibsen's later dramas. But at the same time, they are also characterized by a certain departure from realism: the social sound of the plays weakens, they acquire a more chamber character; typification also weakens, the images of the main characters bear the imprint of a certain sophistication. Often these are sick, broken people. The tragedy of old age or the fading of talent is now becoming Ibsen's favorite topic. Ibsen's constant attraction to symbolism intensifies, at times it loses its former realistic content. The image of the Stranger in The Woman from the Sea is unrealistic, the endings of some dramas are too allegorical: proud, lonely heroes, longing for moral and creative rebirth, die on high peaks, far from the crowd.
Exposing egoism in its various manifestations remains the main goal of Ibsen in the last period of his work. "The demonic woman Rebecca West, who killed her rival in order to take possession of her loved one, cannot bear remorse and takes her life along with her lover ("Rosmersholm" ).
The egoism of Rita Almers is shown in "Little Eyolf", who is jealous of her husband for nature, for books, for her own child, and sacrifices the health and life of this child as a sacrifice of her selfish passion. Characteristically, Rita Almers is a very rich woman who not only won, but bought the love of a poor teacher. No wonder her husband sends a curse to the "gold and green forests" for which he gave her his freedom. Thus, an exquisite psychological drama suddenly acquires a social connotation.
In the drama When We, the Dead, Awaken, the selfishness of the artist, who sacrifices living people to his vocation, is condemned. The sculptor Rubek, who created a beautiful statue, did not notice the love of his model, trampled on her feelings and doomed her to severe mental illness. He treats his young wife Maya just as indifferently, selfishly, but she has enough strength to break with him, to start a new, independent life.
Hedda Gabler
Perhaps the egoism of the Nietzsche type is most clearly exposed in the psychological drama Hedda Gabler. A proud aristocratic daughter of a general, Hedda Gabler marries a humble scientist Tesman. The prejudices of the military-aristocratic caste are combined in her with narcissism, with the conviction that she is the chosen nature. She despises her husband, mocks his old aunts. Her very love for the brilliant but degraded scientist Levborg takes on the traits of hatred. She dreams of playing a fatal role in his life. Having refused to become his wife, she is sure that he will not bear it. But a few years later she meets him alive and well, morally resurrected under the influence of a good woman, Thea Elvstead. He even wrote a scholarly work such as Hedda's husband could never have done. Guided by a variety of feelings, and above all jealousy for Tee, Gedda pushes Levborg to death. She burns his manuscript and advises him to commit suicide. She gives him pistols and insistently repeats: "Only to make it beautiful, Levborg!"
Levborg dies, but his death turns out to be ugly and even unintentional: the pistol inadvertently discharged in his pocket when he, drunk, continued to search for his manuscript.
The two women who fought for Levborg react differently to his death. Thea Elvstead sets about restoring his lost book from the drafts she has preserved. Hedda Gabler, seeing that all her demonic dreams have collapsed, and, moreover, intimidated by a blackmailer, takes her own life. Before us is a duel of two women, characteristic of Ibsen, the destroyer and the creator.
The well-known inconsistency of Ibsen contributed to the most diverse interpretations of his work. The most gross mistake made in literary works is the characterization of Ibsen as a supporter of Nietzsche's philosophy.
A serious analysis of Ibsen's plays convinces us of the opposite: for all the individualism of Ibsen's positive heroes, they are always highly moral personalities striving for good (Brand, Stockman, Rosmer, Frau Alving, etc.). Egoistic individualism, trying to rise above good and evil, is exposed by Ibsen.
Ibsen's artistic originality
Another common mistake is turning Ibsen into a naturalist, and sometimes (in relation to the last period) into a decadent. Naturalism and symbolism had some influence on the later Ibsen. So, he, being an advanced person and interested in the achievements of modern medicine, was sometimes too fond of the theory of heredity. Oswald's illness in "Ghosts", the image of the seriously ill Dr. Rank in "A Doll's House" illustrate this theory. A well-known interest in pathology is also manifested in the image of Hedda Gabler. But one should not exaggerate the elements of naturalism in Ibsen's work. He never resorted to petty everydayism, to photographing reality, he always followed the path of deep generalizations and sharp conflicts. All his work is highly ideological. He also has theoretical arguments against naturalism.
The secret of Ibsen's charm and the originality of his method did not lie in the fascination of the plot, not in the pursuit of effect.
In his best dramas, he gives strictly realistic pictures of everyday life and strives for maximum simplicity. It has long been noted that he often resurrects the principles of the three unities. His action often unfolds in the same room, within one day. Of course, it does not follow from this that Ibsen was a classicist: classicism is long gone; Ibsen only emphasized the significance of the content with the simplicity and unity of the situation.
their plays.
A characteristic feature of Ibsen's dramas is that they are the resolution of long overdue conflicts. Each play by Ibsen represents, as it were, the last stage of the life drama, its denouement. Many of the most important events are relegated to the past, to the prehistory of the play. All the main characters of Ibsen keep a cherished secret to themselves, and it gradually becomes known to the audience. Sometimes it is a shameful or criminal secret, as with the consul Bernick ("Pillars of Society"), Rebecca West ("Rosmersholm"), the builder of Solnes and many others. Sometimes it's a sacred secret, a story of long self-sacrifice, like Nora's or Frau Alving's. At the same time, the whole play turns into a picture of retribution for the previously committed, be it a crime or a mistake.
The second characteristic feature is the presence in Ibsen's play of discussions, lengthy disputes, which are of an ideological, principled nature. The characters themselves discuss and explain what happened. Thus, Mrs. Alving, in a dispute with a pastor, a defender of dead traditions, refutes it with her own terrible example. Nora breaks all Gelmer's arguments in defense of the bourgeois family. Dr. Stockman's dispute with the city bosses is brought to the podium of the rally. This combination of deep psychological drama with its clear and emotional explanation gives Ibsen's plays a special persuasiveness.
Ibsen's dramas, which went around all the theaters of the world, had a strong influence on world drama. Criticism of social reality and interest in the spiritual life of the characters became the laws of progressive drama at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Under the direct influence of Ibsen, the work of such playwrights as B. Shaw and G. Hauptmann took shape.
Almost all of Ibsen's plays were staged on the Russian stage, many of which are still included in the repertoire of Soviet theaters. Ibsen's work was highly appreciated by M. Gorky, K. S. Stanislavsky, A. V. Lunacharsky, A. Blok.
Considering the creative path of Ibsen, one can observe some striking parallels with the life of Shakespeare, both biographically and creatively: financial difficulties in the family, early fatherhood, solid experience in practical work in the theater, and at the same time, of course, the experience of writing plays. . Shakespeare and Ibsen are united, perhaps, by the fact that both of them worked in the space of two genres: drama and lyrics. It was these artists of the word who managed to gracefully throw an artistic bridge between the two genres. Perhaps it was precisely the lyrics that contributed to the creative breakthrough in the field of drama that occurred in Ibsen's work in the 1860s.
Around 1860, Ibsen creates very significant poems - "On the Heights" and "Terje Vigen". He had previously searched for himself, trying to work in different literary genres, but only in these two poems did he manage to solve his task at a worthy artistic level - to depict heroes making a fundamentally important life decision, making a moral choice.
It took Ibsen a long time before he found ground under his feet as a professional writer, that is, a person whose vocation is artistic creativity. The path along which he advanced was by no means direct and easy - the long years of work preceding the so-called creative breakthrough are full of trials, errors and failures. It is only in The Struggle for the Throne (1863) and then in Brand (1866) that it becomes apparent that the search period is over and that Ibsen has fully mastered the professional skill. "Brand", like "Peer Gynt" (1867), was originally addressed only to the readership - Ibsen considered both of these voluminous works to be dramatic poems. But soon a stage perspective opened up before them.
In 1875, Ibsen called the period of his life when he had to work in Bergen (1851–1857) his formative years. This is true because it is about acquiring knowledge and skills regarding the requirements of the stage. Everyday work in the theater prepared the future world success of Ibsen the playwright. But a lot of time passed before he managed to use his Bergen experience quite fruitfully. Moreover, knowing the laws of the stage is still not enough to succeed in the field of dramaturgy.
In his essay "People of the Modern Breakthrough", Georg Brandes stated: "It so happened that in the struggle of life, Ibsen's lyrical horse was driven out." There may be some truth in this statement; be that as it may, in the 1870s Ibsen abandoned the poetic form. However, a legitimate question arises: didn’t Ibsen’s lyrical work thoroughly prepared his formation as a playwright? Poetry requires concise forms of expression and the utmost clarity. That is, a high measure of "consciousness" in terms of the language and structure of the work. Stage art makes similar demands on the author.
Events in Ibsen's plays have an internal connection and logical development similar to those we observe in poetry. One of the most important lyric techniques is repetition. It can also be traced in Ibsen's dramaturgy - for example, parallel scenes and overlapping replicas of characters. In two of his largest poems, dating back to the late 50s and early 60s, Ibsen managed to demonstrate complete creative integrity in every sense, namely, in the poems "On the Heights" (1859-1860) and "Terje Vigen" (1861- 1862). In them we can see how Ibsen "dramatizes" the lyrical epic depiction of the thorny path of man - through the crisis associated with choice, to the light.
The structure of both poems is reminiscent of what Aristotle called the "plot of a tragedy", that is, the sequential course of events. We see, for example, how in the poem "Terje Vigen" Ibsen makes the main character's hair color change (from deep black to full gray), reflecting the various phases of his life. The parallel scenes and the repetition of the dramatic clash between Terje Vigen and the Englishman - a clash that took place in the past - all testify to a clear mastery of form. What unites these two poems is that both of them are built around a central conflict and its subsequent resolution. Aristotle called this, respectively, the tie (lesis) and the denouement (lysis).
Obviously, Ibsen gives the poem a dramatic character: at the decisive moment of choice, the hero utters a monologue addressing the reader, which replaces the usual first-person epic narrative. In these poems, we also notice that Ibsen begins to create his own landscape - poetic, symbolic and at the same time typically Norwegian - where the mountains and the sea are much more important than mere scenery or the background against which the life of the characters takes place. Mountains and the sea play a special role in Ibsen's artistic world - the same role will later be played by his closed secular salon. There is no place for big cities, forests and plains in the work of this writer.
Bjornson on lyrics and drama
Björnson once said that experience in such a "concentrated" genre as poetry can have a beneficial effect on the fate of a writer-dramatist. During his creative development, in 1861, he was just working in Rome on his major dramatic projects: King Sverre and Sigurd Slembe. At the same time, he also wrote small poems.
In one of the letters sent to his homeland, to Christiania, Bjornson expresses confidence that those poetic experiences were very useful for him. “The lyrical genre,” he wrote, “requires painstaking, almost jewelry work. The experience of creating even the most insignificant of my poetic opuses has helped me to make lines in my dramas more polished. When you start working on large, significant topics, the ability to turn to the world around you, to convey all its colors and shades, turns out to be very useful.
It is likely that Ibsen experienced something similar. It is safe to say that the poems "On the Heights" and "Terje Vigen" were of great importance for the formation of Ibsen as a playwright. These poems show us two - fundamentally different in ethical terms - options for an existential choice that a person may face.
Thus, we are presented with two hypostases of the author of these poems, two faces of Ibsen, which Georg Brandes spoke about - severe and soft. Such duality, no doubt, was formed under the influence of the harsh life experience and experiences of the writer in a difficult time for him - in the sixties. Hence the fundamental duality of all Ibsen's work - and the internal dialogue that took place in him throughout his life. The eternal dilemma of the creator.
Self-realization
Considering the formative years of Ibsen, one can also note how slowly and uncertainly he created his own writer's universe, on which the stamp of his personality is clearly visible. He, as a playwright, no doubt needed to accumulate material for the study of conflicts, he needed to clearly comprehend the contradictions in relationships, values, forms of existence and outlook on life, he needed to learn how to push them together.
He feels the need to place his characters in life situations where they have to make choices - fundamental choices of priorities and relationships. And being in such situations involves internal struggle and uncertainty about the outcome. This choice must be free in the sense that there are various options, and when this choice is nevertheless made, it must become a logical consequence of what can be called the Greek word "ethos" in the character of a dramatic character.
Character in itself is not a finished value - it exists only as a possibility, which is realized through choice. It is this principle that becomes clearer each time for the young Ibsen: a person's self-realization can occur only through a decisive choice, a choice of a path, a choice of values, which is at the same time an existential choice. But it will be a long time before Ibsen fully masters the purely literary skill in solving this problem, before he understands that the main thing in the depiction of any conflict is the problem of personality.
It is easy to see that already at the very beginning of his creative path, Ibsen takes the first steps in this direction - as, for example, in the 1850 poem "The Miner". And in his debut drama, Catilina, from the same year, he puts the protagonist in a situation where he has to choose between two lifestyles, which are personified by two women: Furia and Aurelius.
Life in the eyes of society, life in the arena of struggle is opposed to life in a closed home world, among comfort and peace. Both ways of life are attractive in their own way to Catiline, and he hesitates which of the two paths he should choose and which of these two women. After all, they both dream of owning it. The Fury convinces Catiline to put his own life and the lives of others on the line for everlasting glory. But in the end, Aurelius wins the fight for him. A woman's love is ultimately the greatest power in the world.
During his lifetime, Catiline preferred the element of passions, gave himself up to the temptations of glory and power, but when his death hour came, the bright loving Aurelius prevailed over the gloomy and vengeful Fury. For it promises Catiline peace and tranquility. Aurelius comes to his aid at the moment of the highest despair and saves him, regardless of how he lived before and what he did. The love of this woman serves as a guarantee that there is still a grain of nobility left in Catiline. Power-hungry, rebel - but he wished good to Rome.
The play Catiline is interesting mainly because it is a talented overture to all of Ibsen's subsequent dramatic work. When Ibsen returns to Catiline again in 1875, he finds that much of what he has written over the past twenty-five years has already been incorporated into this first drama of his. And he considered that the debut turned out to be successful. But it is also obvious that the young inexperienced writer could not yet quite harmoniously implement his plan - he swung at too much. "Catalina" came out at the same time as a revolutionary drama, and a tragedy of revenge, and a love triangle of the protagonist. In addition, it contains elements of a drama, where the theme of the relationship between Christian and pagan values is touched upon.
With the writing of Fru Inger of Estrot (1854), Ibsen took a big step forward as a playwright. The situation of choice, in which the main character is, is set out much more clearly. The course of events is more consistently built. Artistic reality in the play is woven from complex, intricate intrigues. It has a place for letters, omissions, and all sorts of misunderstandings. (It becomes clear that Ibsen is following in the footsteps of the French playwright Eugene Scribe, who then occupied a leading position in the theater repertoire.)
Frau Inger's situation of choice is bound up with an imperative that relates both to her own destiny and to the future of Norway. The theme of "vocation is more important than life" sounds much more distinct in this drama compared to "Catalina". The mission entrusted to Frau Inger is that she will have to raise the banner of struggle in her homeland, bound by the ties of the Union. She assumed this mission voluntarily, although under the influence of others.
Ibsen puts on one side of the scale the need for a socially significant, heroic deed, which can always be mixed with selfish motives of ambition and lust for power, and on the other side - the heroine's own life and her love for her husband and child. Desperately maneuvering between these dissimilar values, Fru Inger finally tries to combine them. She listens both to the voice of her maternal love and to the voice of social ambition. As a result, a terrible tragedy occurs: through her fault, her only, dearly beloved son dies.
These dramas Catilina and Fru Inger, despite all their weaknesses, clearly outline the contours of the creative universe that the young writer creates for himself. He based both plays on a historical and political theme. Ibsen was well aware that historical tragedy makes the highest demands on the playwright and confronts him with many difficulties. In a theatrical review of 1857, he writes: "Hardly any other form of poetry has to overcome so many difficulties to win the attention and love of the public as a historical tragedy" (4: 620).
In a later chapter, we will take a closer look at how Ibsen worked on the diverse and intricate historical material, trying to make it fit into a very strict dramatic form. Now let's just say that from the very beginning he considered history as material for his work. And he succeeds best of all when he delves into the history of his own people and creates "Fru Inger of Estrot."
In other early plays by Ibsen, there is a certain lack of confidence in the construction of complex dramatic intrigue. This uncertainty is also evident in what stage material he chooses and from where he takes literary prototypes for his characters - from the works of Shakespeare, Schiller, Victor Hugo, Helenschleger, as well as from sagas and folk tales. But after all, almost all of the then dramaturgy existed at this level - a particularly characteristic example was the "theatrical artisan" Eugene Scribe.
A positive lesson that Ibsen could draw from Scribe's stage experience was that intrigue in a drama must be logically motivated. However, the influence exerted on the writer by the so-called "well-made play" (piece bien faite) can be dangerous - primarily because such purely external effects as omissions, confusion, all sorts of misunderstandings, incredible coincidences and constant intrigues can destroy the main nerve of dramatic action. It can be difficult for viewers and readers to figure out who is who and what exactly is happening to each of them.
The influence of Scribe would haunt Ibsen for a long time to come. It can be seen already in the very first Ibsen drama - for example, the repeatedly encountered device of using letters as a reason for starting a conflict. Of course, this influence could even be useful in some ways. Scribe, for example, knew exactly by what means the stage effect was created. But the technical side of the play must obey and serve for the good of the thematic. Ibsen had no doubts about this. In one of his articles in 1857, he writes that the new French dramaturgy, as a rule, creates masterpieces of craftsmanship, masterfully masters the technique, but "at the expense of the essence of art" (4: 619). In addition, she severely lacks poetry. But Ibsen knew exactly what that “true poetry” was (4: 615).
In the dramas entitled The Feast at Sulhaug (1856) and The Warriors at Helgeland (1858), Ibsen attempted to digress from problems like those dealt with by Frau Inger. In these plays, the action is much more dependent on literary characters - and only in the final part of each of these plays, Ibsen clearly opposes alternative life values and orientations to each other. For the time being, he does not place the Christian worldview at the center of the conflict, as he will do much later. He seems to have a hard time fitting Christian values into the conflict situations of these dramas. Here he is satisfied with variations on the themes of unhappy love, a love triangle, as well as various intrigues associated with the struggle for power.
What is most impressive in these two dramas and what seems especially vital in them is the depiction of love as a fate, a tragic female fate - the unquenched longing of Margit and Jordis for their beloved, whom they secretly loved all the years of their unhappy life.
The world through the prism of Christianity
Undoubtedly, Christianity left its mark on the worldview, which was formed by the young writer in the 1850s. To what extent he was influenced by the traditional ideology that dominated society and how much Ibsen himself shared Christian values, it is rather difficult to say. It is safe to say that in his youth he was strongly impressed by the dramatic aspects of Christian doctrine - from the "Christian drama" itself, so to speak. He was impressed by the pictures of the eternal struggle between good and evil, between God's providence and the machinations of Satan, between heaven and earth. He was worried about the problem of choosing one or another path that a person associates with the two poles of being. But religious life as such interested him little.
Ibsen always put a person at the center of his universe and focused on his personal life, and not on relationships with some higher power standing above him or outside him. It is the individual who for Ibsen is the real subject of action, and his fate is depicted exclusively within the framework of earthly, human reality. But since Ibsen often uses Christian symbolism in this, it may seem to us that he is more religious than he really was.
Most clearly, a series of religious allusions can be traced in his work from the seventies. He begins to consider Christianity as a kind of basis for maintaining negative authoritarian power in society. He notes that the activities of the clergy have always been accompanied by the imposition of dominant values and the restriction of the freedom of the individual. Ibsen also dwells on the theme of the voluntary sacrifice that people who have chosen the path of serving the church bring, he reflects on the painful burden of monasticism and how to weaken the theological influence on moral judgment in relation to human actions. Only in his later poetic works, Ibsen again returns to some dramatic aspects of Christian doctrine - perhaps due to the fact that around 1890 the ban on the use of religious themes in literary and theatrical work was lifted.
Of course, Ibsen was well aware of the great influence Christianity had on the minds and souls of people. The drama "Caesar and the Galilean" (1873), which he considered his main work, confirms this, as well as the fact that he himself was under the rule of the "Galilean". “The work I am now publishing,” wrote Ibsen, “will be my main work. It treats the struggle between two irreconcilable forces of world life, a struggle that is constantly repeated at all times, and because of this universality of the theme, I called my work “world drama” ”(4: 701, letter to Ludwig Do dated February 23, 1873) .
Ibsen was an avid reader of the Bible. Again and again he returned to the Old Testament story of the creation of the world and man. In Caesar and the Galilean, Maximus says to Julian the Apostate:
“You see, Julian, when chaos swirled in the terrible emptiness of the world and Jehovah was alone, on that day when, according to the ancient Jewish scriptures, with a wave of His hand He separated light from darkness, water from land, - on that day the great creative God was in the zenith of His power.(4: 223)
But along with the appearance of people on earth, other wills appeared. And people, and animals, and plants began to create their own kind according to eternal laws; the course of the luminaries in heavenly space is also inscribed with eternal laws.
Does Jehovah repent? All ancient traditions speak of a repentant creator.
He himself put the law of self-preservation into his creation. It's too late to repent. The created wants to preserve itself and is preserved.
But two one-sided kingdoms are at war with each other. Where is he, where is that king of the world, that dual one who will reconcile them?
These are the thoughts that Ibsen expressed on paper in the 1870s, at this truly critical time - a turning point both for the spiritual life of European society and for the writer's own life. However, at the beginning of his career, Ibsen does not dispute that God is omnipotent - at least in a symbolic sense. In the youthful outlook of Ibsen there is no place for the rebellious will that dares against the Almighty. Rather, on the contrary, he believes that a person who has rebelled against God himself becomes a victim of the consequences that his rebellion entails. But later, Ibsen begins to look at the theomachism in a completely different way - in an unambiguously positive light. After all, the power that influences society becomes completely different in the eyes of Ibsen: now it is portrayed as a secularized and negative social institution.
In the "Comedy of Love" and "Brand" Old Testament myths are taken as the basis for the symbolic depiction of human life and its highest goal. The fall, the expulsion from paradise, the delusion and decline of the Adam family are the allegories necessary for Ibsen to create the image of modern man and the society in which he lives.
The red thread in Ibsen's early work is the opposition of the ideal to the surrounding reality. To depict the ideal, he uses images that illustrate the Christian doctrine - after all, it was familiar and close to his public.
Ibsen needed to introduce his work into the traditional Christian framework, which then still largely dominated European culture. He used this tradition in his works, since it was precisely this tradition that could intellectually and morally unite the people of that time. In the first years of his creative career, he created precisely within the framework of this tradition - even if it was a symbolic reflection of human existence in its purely earthly aspects. For Ibsen, the key was always the question of the moral and ethical content of the individual, and not of compliance with religious dogmas. That is why we can say about "Brand" that it is entirely a work of art, although the main problem in it is religious. Ibsen never had any narrowly religious considerations. Nor was he a follower of Kierkegaard's philosophy, as Georg Brandes erroneously claimed.
symbolic art
One day in 1865, having just finished working on Brand, Ibsen turned to the greatest critic of that time, the Dane Clemens Petersen: “You once wrote that the poetic form with symbolic content is my true vocation. I have often thought about your words, and this is how I got the form of this work. Perhaps it was in the lyrics that Ibsen first found ground under his feet as a writer.
Here we return again to the question of what significance poetry had for the playwright Ibsen. He wrote the poem "On the Heights" in 1859 - during that period of his life, which can be called the most difficult both in creative and everyday terms. He married in 1858, son Sigurd was born in December 1859. At that time, Ibsen worked hard at the Norwegian Theater in Christiania, while working in the field of drama.
In one of the letters of 1870, recalling that difficult time, he calls the poem "On the Heights" the most important milestone in his work. He correlates this poem with his own life situation, and also points to its direct connection with the "Comedy of Love", and then with "Brand". In particular, he writes: “Only when I got married did my life become more complete and meaningful. The first fruit of this change was the great poem "On the Heights". The thirst for liberation, which runs like a red thread in this poem, found, however, a complete outcome only in the “Comedy of Love” ”(4: 690). The key phrase here is "thirst for liberation." It is often found in his works after his marriage to Susanna. Ibsen does not say directly what kind of liberation he is talking about. But it can be assumed with a high degree of certainty that it implies the obligations and problems that fall on the head and breadwinner of a poor family, while at the same time trying to find time and energy for full-fledged writing.
Ibsen also draws a parallel between The Comedy of Love and Brand. We read about this in two other letters of his - the last of them is dated 1872: “The first work [“ The Comedy of Love ”] should, in fact, be considered as a harbinger of“ Brand ”, since in it I outlined the contradiction between reality, inherent in our social conditions and ideal requirements in the field of love and marriage. It is interesting that Ibsen again returns to the theme of marriage bonds and, like his hero Gregers, holds high the banner of "ideal requirements". One can see how clearly he distinguishes between "ideal" and "reality".
This is an echo of what he wrote in 1867, in the preface to a new edition of The Comedy of Love. There he complains about the "healthy realism" common among Norwegians, which does not allow them to rise above the existing order of things. They are unable to distinguish between ideal and reality. It is the prevailing ideas about love and marriage that Ibsen castigates in his drama - and all just to incur blasphemy and reproaches. In the preface, he writes, in particular: “The majority of our reading and criticizing world lacks the discipline of thought and mental training to understand their own error” (1: 649).
In order to depict what exactly the "demands of the ideal" mean, Ibsen resorts to poetic and symbolic form. It can be noted that only in the poem "On the Heights" does he finally manage to find a form that meets his artistic design. This poem - along with "Terje Vigen", which appeared a little later - very likely contributed to the formation of Ibsen as a playwright. Both poems are like sagas, telling about the fate of two different people - a peasant and a sailor. The writer leads his heroes through restless youth, loss, crisis and suffering - towards enlightenment and spiritual harmony, which they got very dearly. All this corresponds to the tense course of events characteristic of the drama. Particularly useful for Ibsen as a playwright was the work of collecting material for the depiction and structuring of dramatic conflict and struggle between different worldviews.
In the poem "On the Heights" the life of a peasant is opposed to the life of a hunter. The peasant decides to retire to the top of the mountain and spend the rest of his days there, alone, which means for him to voluntarily give up love and family happiness. For the sake of gaining new life, for the sake of insight, he must free himself from the old bonds. The "thirst for liberation" that he carries with him can be both dubious and problematic. The path of Terje Vigen leads to other heights.
Both poems, written by the thirty-year-old Ibsen and telling about two completely different people and destinies, belong to the number of works in the center of which is a person. In both poems, the young hero makes a choice between mutually exclusive ways of life: a peasant leaves his family for the share of a lonely hunter living on mountain peaks, and a sailor refuses a worthless life, having lost everything for which he lived - his wife and child. One chooses loneliness voluntarily, while the other has lost his loved ones. In these poems one can find the beginnings of what later, in the 1860s, would become the cornerstone of Ibsen's greatest works. We are talking about "Brand" with his visions and lonely peaks, and "Peer Gynt" with his Solveig in a poor hut, which became for her and for Per the only royal palace that they found.
All these poems - both the two earlier ones and the two later ones - show us the dual Ibsen. The author's voice now breathes cold, then warms with warmth. In the garden of his work, as on the grave of Terje Vigen, both tough frozen grass and flowers grow. It becomes obvious that Ibsen is beginning to understand how high the stake can be when you have to make your choice, how different life situations and ways to gaining your "I". And this applies not only to others, but also to himself.
Let's look at Terje Vigen's path. For years he dreamed of freedom as a prisoner, desperate and powerless, unable to take responsibility for others. And in the poem "On the Heights" we observe a young man rushing away from the human world to the mountain peaks. The poet Falk in The Comedy of Love (1862) also longs to be freed and also, risking, rushes up to the heights of loneliness. Towards losses, but, perhaps, gains. It is disturbing, however, that this desire to go to the mountains carries a certain destructive element. The hunter is the killer. Falk is named after the bird of prey, the falcon. Here Ibsen shows why the creator needs a look "from the outside" - so that he can create. Deprivation is necessary for creativity. If you don't lose, then you won't find it. Since then, this idea has been constantly heard in the works of Ibsen.
The poem "On the Heights" shows us the way to the depths of his creative world. And the poem "Terje Vigen" relentlessly reminds us that life outside of art also has value. Both poems deal with suffering. Terrier finds freedom from him, and the young peasant is forced to live with him further. The fruit of suffering may be art - but it does not move life forward. Obviously, at the time when these poems were published, Ibsen finally realized what exactly he, as an artist, could draw from his life experience and his reflections on the dialectic of human existence.
