Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen Henrik: biography, creativity, quotes Ibsen drama play literary

Henrik Ibsen is the first name that every cultured person will remember when it comes to the literature of Norway. But Ibsen's work is no longer Norwegian, but world heritage. Standing up for the revival of Norwegian culture, treating folklore with trepidation, the playwright left his homeland for twenty-seven years. The plays, after which Ibsen received worldwide recognition, were created in Germany and Italy. And Ibsen's characters, driven by the author into the rigid framework of the plot, were always alive.

Childhood and youth

On March 20, 1828, a boy was born in a wealthy Ibsen family, to whom his parents gave the name Henryk. In 1836, the Ibsen family went bankrupt, they had to mortgage all their property in order to pay off their creditors.

This change in social position hit little Henryk hard. And previously not distinguished by sociability, the boy completely closed himself in his own little world. The brighter the talent manifested itself - even at the gymnasium, Ibsen began to clothe fantasies, sometimes terribly fabulous, into words.

In Norway, even though it was a Danish colony for 400 years, even the poor could study. But Henryk had to earn a living instead of studying. The fifteen-year-old boy was sent by his parents in 1843 to the neighboring town of Grimstad, where he became an apprentice pharmacist.

Working in a pharmacy did not interfere with creativity, on the contrary, the soul demanded self-realization. Thanks to poems, epigrams and caricatures of the townspeople, by 1847 Henryk gained popularity among the radical youth of Grimstad.

After the revolutionary events in Europe in 1848, Ibsen took up political lyrics and wrote the first play, Catiline, which was not popular.

Literature

In 1850, the young man went to Christiania (as Oslo was called until 1924) to enter the university, but the place of study was taken by near-political activities: teaching at the Sunday school of the workers' association, protest demonstrations, cooperation with the workers' newspaper and student magazine.

Three plays were written in three years, and at the same time, an acquaintance with Bjornstjerne Bjornson, a playwright, theater and public figure, took place. Ibsen quickly got along with him, since both believed in the need for a national self-consciousness of the Norwegians.

In 1852, luck turned to face the young playwright - Ibsen was invited to Bergen, to the first Norwegian National Theatre, where he served as artistic director until 1857. Fresh plays by Ibsen immediately acquired a stage embodiment, and there was also an opportunity to study theatrical cuisine, which definitely allowed dramaturgical skills to grow.

From 1857 to 1862, Ibsen directed the Norwegian Theater in Christiania and fought the Christian Theatre, in which performances were staged in Danish and the actors were entirely Danish. And, of course, he did not stop creating, when writing plays, taking the Norwegian sagas as a basis. In 1863, when Henrik Ibsen had already left the post of director, the two theaters merged into one, and the performances were now only in Norwegian.

Henrik Ibsen at work

The stormy activity of the playwright was based on the desire to live in abundance, having the proper social level, including public recognition. Here, undoubtedly, a difficult childhood affected. For a year and a half, Ibsen sought a writer's scholarship from the Storting (Norwegian parliament).

Finally getting what he wanted in 1864, with the help of friends, Ibsen and his family left their homeland and settled in Italy. There, in two years, he created two plays, "Brand" and "Peer Gynt", putting his whole soul into them, all the accumulated experience, both life and literary.

Music by Edvard Grieg for Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt

"Peer Gynt" was perceived negatively by the Danes and Norwegians. spoke of the play as the worst work he had ever read. Solveig saved the situation. And also - who wrote the music for the play "Peer Gynt" at the request of the playwright.

Ibsen's further work fell from the networks of Norwegian sagas into the mainstream of realism. The masterpieces of dramaturgy "A Doll's House", "Ghosts", "Wild Duck", "The Builder Solnes" and other plays speak about social problems.

For example, the drama "A Doll's House" was based on real events. The main theme of the work is the "women's issue", but not only the position of women in society is affected. It is also about individual freedom in general. And the prototype of the main character was Laura Keeler, a writer who was friends with Ibsen, who, in fact, advised the young 19-year-old girl to engage in literature.

In the bibliography of Henrik Ibsen, the reader will find neither novels nor short stories - only poems, poems and plays. The playwright did not leave his diaries either. But the plays were included in the "golden fund" of world drama. Books with Ibsen's works are published in different languages, and his aphorisms have long gone to the people.

Personal life

Young Ibsen was timid with women. However, Henryk was lucky to meet Suzanne Thoresen. The energetic daughter of a priest became the playwright's wife in 1858, and in 1859 gave birth to Ibsen's only son, Sigurd.

Henrik Ibsen has never been involved in scandals related to his personal life. Creative natures are people who are addicted and amorous, and Ibsen is no exception. But despite this, Suzanne remained his only woman until her death.

Death

In 1891, having become famous in Europe, Ibsen returned from a voluntary exile that had lasted 27 years. Henryk lived in Christiania for 15 years, having managed to write the last four plays. On May 23, 1906, after a long serious illness, the biography of the Norwegian playwright ended.

An interesting fact was told by Dr. Edward Bull. Before Ibsen's death, relatives gathered in his room, and the nurse noted that today the patient looks better. The playwright said:

"On the contrary!" - and died.

Quotes

“Most people die without really living. Lucky for them, they just don't realize it."

“In order to truly sin, this matter must be taken seriously.”

"The strongest is the one who fights alone."

“... you love some people more than anything in the world, but somehow you most want to be with others.”

Bibliography

• 1850 - Catilina
• 1850 - "Bogatyrsky Kurgan"
• 1852 - "Norma, or Politician's Love"
• 1853 - "Midsummer Night"
• 1855 - "Fru Inger of Estrot"
• 1856 - "Feast in Sulhaug"
• 1856 - "Warriors in Helgeland"
• 1857 - Olaf Liljekrans
• 1862 - "Comedy of Love"
• 1863 - "Struggle for the throne"
• 1866 - "Brand"
• 1867 - "Peer Gynt"
• 1869 - "Union of Youth"
• 1873 - dilogy "Caesar and the Galilean"
• 1877 - "Pillars of Society"
• 1879 - "A Doll's House"
• 1881 - "Ghosts"
• 1882 - "Enemy of the people"
• 1884 - "Wild Duck"
• 1886 - "Rosmersholm"
• 1888 - "The Woman from the Sea"
• 1890 - "Hedda Gabler"
• 1892 - "Builder Solnes"
• 1894 - "Little Eyolfe"
• 1896 - "Jun Gabriel Borkman"
• 1899 - "When We Dead Awake"

Henrik Ibsen photography

In the eyes of his contemporaries, Ibsen looked like a real giant, who was the first to declare the falseness that permeates contemporary public morality, the first to call for "life not by lies", the first to utter the words: "Man, be who you are." His voice carried far. Ibsen was heard not only in his homeland, but also in France, Germany, England, America, even Russia. He was looked upon as a subverter of the foundations, much more influential and, most importantly, much more daring and original than, for example, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Actually, in the eyes of the descendants, Nietzsche occupied the niche that contemporaries assigned to Ibsen - apparently due to the fact that philosophical texts are better preserved in time than plays that are more dependent on the artistic tastes of the era.

Nietzsche's famous words "all the gods have died" in the eyes of the modern European are the watershed that draws a clear line between hoary antiquity and the easily recognizable present. No matter how you feel about these words and everything that they released - contempt for "idols" of any kind, exaltation of everything individually subjective, neglect of "human, too human" for the sake of "superhuman", it cannot be denied that without them we today would be essentially others. However, Nietzsche became known to the general public only after the Danish critic Georg Brandes drew attention to his writings in 1888 in his famous course of lectures on cultural history delivered in Copenhagen. Meanwhile, Peer Gynt from Ibsen's dramatic poem of the same name, back in 1867, asked in despair: "So is it really empty everywhere? .. Neither in the abyss, nor in the sky is anyone? .."

Until 1864, Ibsen's creative biography developed quite predictably. He was born in the provinces, in the family of a ruined merchant, at the age of fifteen he began to compose poetry, at twenty he finished his first play ("Catiline") and firmly decided to devote himself to the theater. First, he moved to Christiania (as Oslo was called until 1925), and then to Bergen, where at that time there was the only national theater in all of Norway, and from 1852 to 1857 he served in it as a playwright and artistic director.

The Bergen theater arose in the wake of the rise of the national self-consciousness of the Norwegians, and its leaders wanted to oppose their productions to the then prevailing fashion for French and Danish (but also imitating French) salon, so-called "well-made" plays. During this period, Ibsen wrote based on "national" material - Icelandic sagas and Norwegian folk ballads. This is how the dramas The Heroic Mound (1850), Fru Inger from Estrot (1854), Feast in Sulhaug (1855), Olaf Liljekrans (1856), Warriors in Helgeland (1857), Fight for throne" (1863). Almost all of them were staged at the Norwegian Theatre, where the young playwright experienced full stage success. But Ibsen, who by the end of the 1950s had become disillusioned with the ideals of pan-Scandinavism, felt cramped within the framework of conventional romantic dramaturgy, stylized as antiquity.

Ibsen left the theater and moved to Christiania. He had a firm conviction that the modern theater was not suitable for the realization of his plans, that he could not succeed as an artist in his homeland, and therefore, having received a scholarship from the Norwegian parliament, the writer went abroad in 1864. The desire for spiritual independence, for liberation from all sorts of "idols", including Norwegian patriotism, kept him away from Norway for almost thirty years, during which Ibsen lived mainly in Italy and Germany. Only in 1891, having written his best works and having become famous throughout Europe, did he allow himself to return to his homeland.

The very first work, published by Ibsen abroad, attracted the attention of a European reader to him. In the summer of 1865 in Rome, the writer quickly, in three months, reworked into a drama a draft of a large epic poem, on which he had been working for a whole year. This is how "Brand" appeared - a lengthy five-act drama, although written in verse, but representing modern life. The title character of the drama - prest (parish priest) from a small Norwegian village on the banks of the fjord - devotes his life to uncompromising service to God, understanding religious duty as a constant sacrificial willingness to part with everything he has, up to life itself and the life of his loved ones. Brand's devout religiosity frightens those around him, because it pursues completely different goals, which - according to generally accepted opinion - religion should serve. Instead of consolation, the priest offers his parishioners a constant test, makes them strain their will for the sake of striving to fully realize themselves as a spiritual person. "All or nothing" is Brand's motto (taken by Ibsen from the work of the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard; the Russian reader knows it as "Either - or").

Therefore, from an ascetic of the Christian faith, Brand quickly turns into an ascetic of the individual human will, which is able to overcome everything - both harsh life circumstances and the laws of internal, biological, determinism. Brand is not afraid to challenge God himself - not that "bald old man" in glasses and a yarmulke (Brand speaks so disrespectfully about the object of a traditional cult), but his own, Brand's god, merciless, demanding from a person more and more new victims, not giving any minutes of respite. Faced with the weakness of human nature ("He who has seen God will die," his wife says before her death), Brand - twenty years before the release of "Zarathustra"! - lights up with hope by an effort of will to transform the flesh, overcome death, become a Superman, and leads his flock up to the icy mountain peaks.

Best of the day

Ibsenovsky Brand is the creator of himself, who devoted his whole life to "self-creation". His ruthlessness towards himself and those around him is akin to the passion of a true artist, who, in anticipation of the birth of a masterpiece, is overwhelmed by passion to realize his plan at all costs. Brand understands creativity as a rejection of naturalness, of the "human", he does not have the right to spoil his work by accidental pity or cowardice.

The finale of the drama remains open - to judge Brand, to call his life a crime or a feat, Ibsen leaves it to the readers - just as in his next dramatic poem in verse, written about a kind of anti-Brand named Peer Gynt (1867). In this play, the playwright settled scores with everything he left at home. The play "Peer Gynt", full of fantasy and fabulous folklore motifs, ridiculing Scandinavian savagery, peasant inertia, small-town patriotism, the impotence of an idle mind, petty squandering of life, Ibsen called "the most Norwegian" of everything he created. Peer Gynt, who has remained satisfied with himself all his life, realizes in his old age that in fact he was only evading his main task - to become what he was supposed to become. Rejected by heaven and hell, Per finds comfort next to Solveig, who has been waiting for him for decades and has become blind from waiting. The famous music of Edvard Grieg, which greatly contributed to the popularization of this Ibsenian drama, romanticized the relationship between Per and Solveig, softened Ibsen's intention. The playwright himself, as in the case of "Brand", does not give an answer to the question: is the selfless love of another person enough for Per's dissolute life to acquire at least some sense, and is there any sense in this love itself?

In 1873, Ibsen created his last verse drama, Caesar and the Galilean, in order to then, turning to prose, move on to dramas about modernity, presenting it in a completely different manner. A wide epic scope, unhurried philosophical monologues, violent fantasy, exoticism and mythology - all this is leaving, clearing the way for the onset of the new. "Pillars of Society" (1877), "A Doll's House" (1879), "Ghosts" (1881), "Enemy of the People" (1882), "Wild Duck" (1884) - these are the plays that laid the foundation for the "new drama" , and with it - the process of renewal of theatrical business throughout Europe.

Being excommunicated from the theater, not hoping to see his plays on stage, Ibsen could afford bold experiments. He turned to the experience of young naturalistic literature, which proclaimed man a derivative function of the environment, biological and socio-historical, and set the goal of art to explore this environment. Questions of heredity and temperament, the impact of bad habits, the influence of family environment, the imprint left by the profession, social and property status - these are the circle of "factors" that determine, according to naturalists, the fate and essence of every person. Ibsen was never a naturalist in the exact sense of the word - he was still interested in either Brand's experience of volitional overcoming of these factors ("A Doll's House"), or Gynt's experience of surrender to them ("Ghosts"), but every time the subject of his dramas became full of tragedy the history of the formation of personality (which naturalists just rejected). However, from naturalism, Ibsen took themes forbidden for a "decent" society, the desire to explore the hidden internal and external springs that govern human behavior, the taste for a literal, life-like depiction of reality. But most importantly, the appeal to naturalism in the drama required other principles for organizing theatrical work.

The old theater was based on the "benefit" style of acting. Actors, especially well-known ones, took to the stage in order to demonstrate their ability to recite and gesticulate, to “solo”, sometimes to the detriment of the overall impression of the performance. Acting techniques themselves were formulaic, designed for a narrow range of "characters" or, in a modern way, "temperaments". Performances were based on one "star" or a group of "stars" (sometimes right on the stage fiercely competing with each other for the attention of the audience), everything else was relegated to the background. The scenery was extremely conventional, the costumes corresponded more to the tastes and ambitions of the actors than to the objectives of the performance. Extras were usually random people hired for one evening for a meager pay. The director in such a theater was a minor person who helped organize the production, but was not at all responsible for its artistic merits. The playwright, creating a play, immediately prepared it for one or another performing group, taking into account the strengths and weaknesses of each of the "stars" and trying not to go beyond their usual, "heroic" or "love", but always stereotyped psychological situations.

Ibsen was the first who managed to find drama in the everyday, everyday life of his contemporaries, to renew the set of means of artistic and psychological expression, to reject the slavery of the playwright before the traditions of acting. All the famous stage reformers of the last quarter of the 19th century, creators of experimental theater clubs throughout Europe - Andre Antoine (Paris Free Theater), Otto Brahm (Berlin Free Stage), Konstantin Stanislavsky (Moscow Art Theater); playwrights, creators of naturalistic and symbolist dramas - the Germans Gerhart Hauptman and Josef Schlaf, the Austrians Frank Wedekind, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Arthur Schnitzler, the Swede August Strindberg, the British Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, the Irish John Millington Sing, the Belgian Maurice Maeterlinck, the French Eugene Brie and Paul Claudel, Spaniard Jacinto Benavente y Martinez, Russian Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov - followed in the footsteps of the Norwegian writer, inspired by his discoveries or repelled by them.

"New Drama" put an end to the dominance of acting whims, subordinating theatrical business to the playwright and director. From now on, philosophically acute, socially significant problems, the study of which was undertaken by the playwright, and the overall artistic impression of the performance, for the creation of which the director was responsible, who received full power over the ensemble of actors and over other means of theatrical expression - musical accompaniment, were put at the forefront. , decoration, scenography, etc. The performance was no longer a set of well-known phrases, gestures, situations. "New Drama" set as its goal to explore society and man, to depict a "true" life, to avoid "lies" in every possible way - both aesthetic (the actor was not supposed to "play" a role, but "live" in it), and ethical (playwrights and directors were ready to turn to the darkest and most unpleasant aspects of life, if only not to embellish reality, to show it "truthfully", in the most accurate, clinically naked form). The conditional scenery and entourage of "well-made" plays were replaced by an accurate reproduction on the stage of everyday conditions and historical circumstances, the actors began to achieve such a picture of the role that would convey not just some abstract psychological state, but also bear the imprint of specific, each time unique social and social conditions, the "environment" in which, according to the playwright's plan, this character grew up and formed. "New Drama" introduced the concept of "fourth stage", invisibly separating the stage from the auditorium. The actors went out onto the stage not to show themselves to the viewer, but to live an ordinary life, while the viewer now only had to “peep” at them, as if through a keyhole. It was then that it turned out that behind the "fourth wall", "away" from prying eyes, a lot of interesting and unexpected things are happening.

Ibsen was not afraid to bring scandalous themes and situations to the stage. So, in the center of the play "A Doll's House" is Nora, an ordinary woman from an ordinary bourgeois family, living on the petty cares of the mistress of a rich house, lovingly taking care of her husband and children. But Ibsen unfolds an analytical play before us, penetrates Nora's past, and then it turns out that she has a long-standing secret of her own, which she jealously protects from her husband. Behind the appearance of a pretty and slightly eccentric young woman, there is a strong will and character that declare themselves as soon as Nora's secret comes to light. The individual truth of her long-standing transgression is in conflict with the social morality that Nora's husband personifies, and Nora suddenly realizes that the very environment in which she lives does not imply that a single woman has any own truth, assigns her the role of a dumb doll. And then, before the eyes of the audience, the "doll" turns into a character endowed with Brandon's strong will, ready to step over the generally accepted standards for the sake of self-realization, the truth, to which any "lie" can be sacrificed. This new Nora interrupts her husband's instructive rantings with unexpectedly harsh words: "Sit down, Torvald. We have something to talk about ... We'll settle scores."

Stage action gives way to discussion - a typical technique of the mature Ibsen and an important sign of the "new drama" (later Shaw would develop this technique to the maximum, turning the British "new drama" into a "drama of ideas"). Where the old drama would draw its final curtain, Ibsen comes to the most important. The characters stop moving around the stage and discuss what happened between them. Nora tells her husband that she leaves him and the children and leaves home to "sort out herself and everything else." “Or do you have no duties to your husband and to your children?” Torvald exclaims pathetically. "I have others that are just as sacred." - "You don't have any! What are they?" - Duty to self. “You are first and foremost a wife and mother.” "I don't believe in that anymore. I think I'm human first and foremost." The finale of the play is indicative (and scandalous for its time): Nora, having won a moral victory, leaves the Dollhouse, which has become a stranger to her overnight.

Even more scandalous was the play "Ghosts" (perhaps the most "naturalistic" by Ibsen), for a long time pursued by censors throughout Europe (it was first staged only in 1903). Her main character is also a woman, Fru Alving, who at one time, unlike Nora, failed to protect her human dignity and was forced to suffer because of this all her life. The serious mental illness of her son is a retribution for the wild past of her husband, Mrs. Alving, whose adventures she carefully concealed for fear of tarnishing the honor of the family. Only once, in her youth, Ms. Alving, unable to stand it, ran away from home to a man from whom, as it seemed to her, she could find support. But this man, a local pastor, for reasons of Christian morality forced her to return to her hated husband. Only many years later, when her seriously ill son shows an incestuous addiction to a young maid living in the house (in fact, his half-sister by father), Mrs. Alving cannot stand it and throws reproaches in the face of the same pastor that the life of people her circle is full of "ghosts" - these are "all sorts of old, obsolete beliefs, concepts and the like." "We are such miserable cowards, we are afraid of the light!" she exclaims bitterly.

In Ibsen's plays of the 1890s - "Hedda Gabler" (1890), "The Builder Solness" (1892), "Rosmersholm" (1896), "When we, the dead, awaken" (1899) and others - a new Ibsenian aesthetics, no longer gravitating towards naturalism, but towards symbolism. Proud Hedda Gabler, who, out of love for "beauty," encourages the suicide of a man whom she loved and who turned out to be unworthy of her love, rejoices when she learns that this man died from a bullet fired from a revolver she presented. "In the chest, you said?" - "Yes exactly". - "And not in the temple?" - "In the chest." - "Yes, yes, and nothing in the chest either." But a minute later she is informed that the death was accidental - the revolver itself fired at the moment when the former chosen one of Hedda was rolling a low scene in a brothel, and the bullet hit the stomach ... and follows me on the heels of a funny and vulgar, like some kind of curse! "But, merciful God... they don't do that!" one of the characters exclaims in fear when he sees this death. But the heroes of Ibsen's later plays finally break away from naturalistic earthiness and socio-biological determinism. The brand's principle begins to speak in them again in full voice, and the cozy living room in Norwegian mansions becomes crowded from the pressure of the creative individual will, which now acts as an emphasized destructive, destructive principle.

Hilda Wangel from "The Builder of Solnes", a young girl in love with an old master, tired of life, idolizing in him an artist who can not be afraid of heights - both in the literal sense of the word (Solnes is the builder of church bell towers), and in the metaphysical one, makes him to go against his own weak nature, his own fears and feelings of guilt, to take up the feat of creation again. Solnes submits to her unbending will and dies, falling from the tower. "Youth is retribution," Solnes warns himself and the reader; as if echoing him, picking up the baton of creativity, Hilda at the end of the play enthusiastically shouts: "But he reached the top. And I heard the sounds of a harp in the air. My ... my builder!"

Ibsen, who created in his plays a whole gallery of strong, outstanding female images, earned himself a reputation as a champion of female emancipation. However, the writer himself never considered himself a supporter of the "women's issue". "I ... must reject the honor of consciously contributing to the women's movement. I have not even fully understood its essence. The cause for which women are fighting seems to me universal. And whoever carefully reads my books will understand this. , as if along the way, and the women's question, but this is not my whole idea. My task was to depict people, "he wrote later.

In fact, Ibsen portrayed only two people all his life - Brand, who became himself, and Peer Gynt, who abandoned himself. These two heroes somehow appeared in various plays of the playwright, took on a variety of guises, symbolically expressing the two sides of a single personal paradox. Both died themselves and caused a lot of suffering to their loved ones. What should the viewer of Ibsen choose?

It is unlikely that today, a hundred years after the death of the playwright, it is easier to answer this question than in his time.

"New Drama" (Ibsen, Shaw, Hauptmann, Maeterlinck)

The formation at the turn of the century of the so-called "new drama"

we" in the works of Ibsen, Strindberg, Shaw, Hauptmann, Me-

terlinka, etc.).

Characteristic features of the "new drama":

striving for the reliability of the image;

relevance and topicality of the problem;

the social nature of the conflict;

the influence of various ideological and stylistic trends and schools.

main genres. Evolution.

"New Drama" as the beginning of the dramaturgy of the 20th century.

Ibsen as a founder modern philosophical and

psychological drama.

Periodization of Ibsen's work.

"Drama of ideas" and the principle of retrospective ("analytical") composition; the problem of Ibsen's artistic method (synthesis of the principles of realism, naturalism, symbolism).

The ideological and artistic originality of the plays "A Doll's House (Nora)", "Ghosts", "The Builder Solness".

aesthetic theory symbolist theater Maeterlinck(book

"Treasures of the Humble"):

understanding the essence of the tragic;

the concept of dual world and the principle of "second dialogue";

the idea of ​​Rock;

theater of silence.

Motif of expectation in one-act plays-parables

Maeterlinck "Blind", "Unbidden", "There, inside".

B. Show. Periodization of creativity. Literary-critical

the activities of the young Shaw, the influence of Fabianism on the writer.

Shaw and Ibsen ("The Quintessence of Ibsenism"). Drama Features-

turgy Show of the 90s. ("Unpleasant Plays", "Pleasant Plays").

The theme of emancipation ("Mrs. Warren's Profession"). Innovation

Shaw's dramatic method: the genre of social and intellectual

discussion drama ("Chocolate Soldier", "Caesar and Cle

opatra", "Pygmalion"). Shaw and the First World War. Problem

intelligentsia in the play "House where hearts break".

Hauptmann's creative method, periodization of creativity.

Naturalism of the early Hauptmann ("Before Sunrise").

The image of the "mass hero" in the drama "Weavers", the play's innovation. Neo-romanticism and symbolism in the work of Hauptmann ("The Sunken Bell") and K. Hamsun ("Hunger", "Pan", "Victoria", "Mysteries").

An example of a new drama: (those who have not read this work may not understand something, so remember what is in bold)

"A Doll's House" by Ibsen - "drama of ideas"

The first drama in which the new principles were most fully displayed was A Doll's House. 1879, (the year of the birth of the "drama of ideas", that is, realistic socio-psychological drama with tense ideological clashes).

The issue of women's rights is becoming a problem social inequality All in all

retrospective composition creates an opportunity to penetrate the real essence of social and moral relationships, hidden from prying eyes, when a woman is afraid to admit that she is capable of independent noble deeds (saving a sick husband and protecting a dying father from unrest) and state laws and official morality qualify these actions just like a crime.

The forged signature on the bill represents the "secret" characteristic of Ibsen's method. Clarification of the social and moral essence this "secret" is the real content of the drama.

The conflict arose eight years before the start of the stage action, but was not recognized. The events that pass before our eyes turn into a clarification of the essence of the disagreement that arose in the past. Conflict official views and natural human needs.

Nevertheless, no drama finale, as was typical of dramaturgy before Ibsen, resolution of the conflict: Nora leaves her husband's house, not finding a positive solution, but hoping to calmly figure out what happened and realize it. The incompleteness of the action is emphasized by the fact that Helmer, her husband, remains in anticipation of the "miracle of miracles" - the return of Nora, their mutual rebirth.

Incomplete action, "open ending”is a consequence of the fact that Ibsen does not conflict with individual disagreements that can be removed within the framework of dramatic time, but the playwright turns his works into a forum where the main problems are discussed, which can be solved only by the efforts of the whole society and not within the framework of a work of art.

A retrospective drama is a climax that has emerged after the events that preceded it, and new events will follow it.

A characteristic feature of Ibsen's drama are transforming inherently social disagreements into moral ones and resolving them in a psychological aspect. Attention is focused on how Nora perceives her actions and the actions of others, how her perception of the world and people changes. Her suffering and heavy insight become the main content of the work.

In the psychological drama of Ibsen, a significant role will be played by symbolism. The little woman rebels against society, she does not want to be a doll in a doll house. The name of the play is also symbolic - "A Doll's House".

The symbol "doll house" indicates the main idea of ​​the drama - the the desolation of the human in man.

The playwright achieved that the viewer became his "co-author", and his characters solved the very problems that worried viewers and readers.

21. Ibsen's drama Peer Gynt. The protagonist and peasants, trolls. BIOGRAPHY Henrik Johan Ibsen

the language in which Bokmål wrote (this is a Norwegian type) Directions in which he wrote: symbolism, naturalism

Heinrich Ibsen comes from an ancient and wealthy Danish family of shipowners who moved to Norway around 1720. The playwright's father, Knud Ibsen., was active in a healthy nature; mother, a German by birth, the daughter of a wealthy Skien merchant, was especially strict, dry-tempered and extremely pious. In 1836, Knud Ibsen went bankrupt, and the life of a rich, well-established family changed dramatically. Former friends and acquaintances gradually began to move away, gossip, ridicule, all kinds of hardships began. Human cruelty was reflected very hard on the future playwright. And so already by nature unsociable and wild, he now began to seek solitude even more and became hardened. In the 16th year of his life, Ibsen had to. enroll as an apprentice in the pharmacy of the nearby town of Grimstadt, with a population of only 800 inhabitants. I. having left Skien without any regret, he never returned there again. In the pharmacy, where he stayed for 5 years, the young man secretly dreamed of further education and obtaining a doctoral degree. The revolutionary ideas of 1848 found an ardent supporter in him. In his first poem, an enthusiastic ode, he sang of the Hungarian martyr patriots. Ibsen's life in Grimstadt became more and more unbearable for him. He aroused against himself the public opinion of the town with his revolutionary theories, free-thinking and harshness. Finally, Ibsen. decided to leave the pharmacy and went to Christiania, where he had to lead a life full of all sorts of hardships at first. In Christiania, Ibsen met and became close friends with Bjornson, who later became his fierce opponent. Together with Bjornson, Vigny and Botten-Hansen, Ibsen founded the weekly newspaper Andhrimner in 1851, which existed for several months. Here Ibsen placed several poems and a 3-act dramatic satirical work "Norma". years and in 1857 he returned to Christiania, also as director of the theater. Here he remained until 1863. Ibsen married. in 1858 and was very happy in his married life. In 1864, after much trouble, Ibsen received a writer's pension from the Storting and used it to travel south. First he settled in Rome, where he lived in complete seclusion, then moved to Trieste, then to Dresden and Munich, from where he traveled to Berlin, and was also present at the opening of the Suez Canal. The best known are romantic dramas based on the plots of the Scandinavian sagas and historical plays, the philosophical and symbolic dramatic poems Brand (1866) and Peer Gynt (1867), sharply critical social realistic dramas A Doll's House (Nora, 1879), Ghosts "(1881)," Enemy of the people "(1882).

MAIN CHARACTER Peer Gynt - an image borrowed by Ibsen from a folk tale about a skilled entertainer and rogue Peer Gynt. But only the main character and some plot collisions are taken from folklore. In the drama, Gynt embodies all the features of a modern Norwegian to the author, in other words, a typical person of bourgeois society. Per is deprived of any wholeness, any stability in life. A brave and daring guy who loves his mother, who is able to challenge the rich, suddenly turns into an opportunist who deliberately swaps the mottos "be yourself" and "be pleased with yourself." With the same ease, he changes his appearance: with trolls he is ready to be a troll, with American slave owners - a slave owner, with monkeys - a monkey, etc. Per often demonstrates his inner weakness and spinelessness. His nothingness appears in a grandiose guise. Its emptyness and emptiness create a special, "Gyntian" philosophy. A small person is given in a symbolic image of a large scale. Per strives for success, dreams of fame, power, wants to be king. Ibsen's entire play is devoted to exposing this program. Peer Gynt is a ruthless egoist, preoccupied only with his own person. The seeds of evil sown in his soul by the "trolls" bear fruit: Per stubbornly goes forward and does not shun any means in order to achieve his goal. However, the egoism of the protagonist receives a certain "philosophical justification". Gynt commits his crimes in order to more fully manifest his individuality, his own, Gyntian "I". In a scene depicting the insane asylum in Cairo, Gynt's philosophy of the "I" is mercilessly ridiculed. Ibsen's hero turns out to be less valiant than his fabulous prototype. So, at least in the episode with the Great Curve, the fabulous Gynt turns out to be the winner, while in the play he is saved only thanks to the intercession of his mother and his girlfriend Solveig, who loves him. In the image of Solveig, who has been waiting for her beloved for many years, the author creates a special world of elevated feelings, a kind of sacred reserved area in which the hero of the drama will be saved. Only sometimes a person wakes up in Gynt - at a meeting with Solveig, at the hour of his mother's death. But every time he lacks the determination to make the right choice. In the fourth act of the play, Per becomes a major speculator, having enriched himself with the help of the most shameless means of capitalist money-grubbing. He makes his fortune by trading in slaves, selling idols to the Chinese, and selling the Bible and bread to missionaries intent on converting the Chinese to Christianity. Per has four companions, among whom Mr. Cotton, who embodies English utilitarianism and practicality, stands out in particular. The whole world for him is just an object for speculation, for squeezing out profits. The image of von Eberkopf is also unambiguous. Eberkopf is the bearer of the spirit of Prussian aggression. Despite the fact that Eberkopf flaunts abstract philosophical terminology, he is always ready for any violent action for his own benefit. It is Eberkopf who decides to rob the sleeping Gynt and, having bribed his team, seize his yacht. Such are Gynt's companions, but he hardly deserves a better environment. Ibsen, talking about the moral degradation of the protagonist, likens him to an empty wild onion: “There is not a piece inside. What is left? One shell. And yet the author does not deny Gynt the possibility of moral purification. Solveig meekly and patiently waits for his lover. She is the salvation for Per The image of Solveig merges in the play with the image of Gynt's homeland PEASANTS dick knows what to say about them. Found The image of the peasant crowd, which Peer Gynt encounters at a wedding in Hägstad, least of all resembles the depiction of modern peasant life, not only in the early Norwegian romantic dramaturgy of Bjeregaard or Riis, but also in Bjornson's peasant novel.

Peasant boys are envious and angry. Their leader, blacksmith Aslak, is a rude and bully. Girls are devoid of pity and compassion. Both young people and old people are not averse to laughing at a lonely and unhappy person who is not like the others. The guys get Per drunk to make fun of him. Everywhere the desire for money, for wealth, for the grossest material pleasures dominates. Ingrid is married off to a degenerate bum because his parents are rich peasants. Equally unattractive is the appearance of the crowd in the fifth act, in the auction scene. Poverty and squalor, lack of honor and at least some understanding of the higher aspects of life - that's what characterizes old Mas Mon and Aslak, guys and onlookers crowding at the auction. The contemptuous appraisal that Peer Gynt gives to this crowd in his parable of the devil and the pig is entirely justified.

Ibsen is just as merciless to the folklore motifs and images richly represented in the play. He uses them in two ways to compromise romantic ideology.

TROLLS author leads Per to the Trolls - fantastic, ugly creatures hostile to people - and sees him internally ready to accept for life their formula - "be satisfied with yourself", which is the opposite of Brand's life motto - "be yourself". The motto of the people is an incentive for the improvement of the individual. The formula of the trolls is an excuse for stagnation, philistine complacency, stupid submission to circumstances, the death of the individual.

Laura Cole / Monument to Henrik Ibsen at the National Theater of Norway in Oslo

Henrik Ibsen is the first association that arises when talking about the literature of Norway. In fact, the work of the great Norwegian playwright has long become the property of not only Norwegian, but also world culture.

Ibsen's life and work are full of the most amazing contradictions. Thus, being a passionate apologist for national liberation and the revival of the national culture of Norway, he nevertheless spent twenty-seven years in self-imposed exile in Italy and Germany.

Enthusiastically studying national folklore, he consistently destroys the romantic halo of folk sagas in his plays. The plot structure of his plays is built so rigidly that sometimes it borders on tendentiousness, but they are by no means sketchy, but lively and multifaceted characters.

The latent moral relativism of Ibsen, combined with the "iron" and even tendentious logic of the development of the plot, makes it possible to interpret his plays in an extremely diverse way. So, Ibsen is recognized as a playwright of a realistic direction, but the Symbolists consider him one of the most important founders of their aesthetic movement.

At the same time, he was sometimes called "Freud in dramaturgy." The gigantic power of talent allowed him to organically combine in his work the most diverse, even polar, themes, ideas, problems, means of artistic expression.

Born March 20, 1828 in the small Norwegian town of Skien in a wealthy family, but in 1837 his father went bankrupt and the situation of the family changed. A sharp transition to the social lower classes became a severe psychological trauma for the boy, and this was somehow reflected in his future work.

From the age of 15 he was forced to start earning his living - in 1843 he left for the tiny town of Grimstad, where he got a job as an apprentice pharmacist. The practically beggarly life of a social outcast forced Ibsen to seek self-realization in a different area: he writes poetry, satirical epigrams on the respectable bourgeois of Grimstad, and draws cartoons.

This is bearing fruit: by 1847 he is becoming very popular among the radical youth of the town. He was greatly impressed by the revolutionary events of 1848, which engulfed a significant part of Western Europe.

Ibsen complements his poetic work with political lyrics, and also writes the first play Catiline (1849), imbued with tyrannical motives. The play was not successful, but strengthened his decision to engage in literature, art and politics.

In 1850 he left for Christiania (since 1924 - Oslo). His goal is to enter the university, but the young man is captured by the political life of the capital. He teaches at the Sunday school of the workers' association, participates in protest demonstrations, collaborates with the press - the workers' newspaper, the journal of the student society, takes part in the creation of a new socio-literary magazine "Andhrimner".

And he continues to write plays: Bogatyrsky Kurgan (1850, started back in Grimstad), Norma, or Love of Politics (1851), Midsummer Night (1852). In the same period, he met the playwright, theater and public figure Bjornstjerne Bjornson, with whom he found a common language on the basis of the revival of the national identity of Norway.

This stormy activity of the playwright in 1852 led to his invitation to the post of artistic director of the newly created first Norwegian National Theater in Bergen. He remained in this post until 1857 (he was replaced by B. Bjornson).

This turn in Ibsen's life can be considered an extraordinary stroke of luck. And it's not just that all the plays he wrote during the Bergen period were immediately staged on the stage; practical study of the theater "from the inside" helps to reveal many professional secrets, which means it contributes to the growth of the playwright's skill. During this period, the plays Fru Inger of Estrot (1854), Feast at Sulhaug (1855), Olaf Liljekrans (1856) were written.

In the first of these, he first switched to prose in his dramaturgy; the last two are written in the style of Norwegian folk ballads (the so-called "heroic songs"). These plays, again, were not particularly successful on the stage, but played a necessary role in Ibsen's professional development.

In 1857–1862 he headed the Norwegian Theater in Christiania. In parallel with the management of the theater and drama work, he continues active social activities, aimed mainly at combating the working Christian theater of the pro-Danish direction (the troupe of this theater consisted of Danish actors, and the performances were in Danish).

This stubborn struggle was crowned with success after Ibsen left the theater: in 1863 the troupes of both theaters were united, the performances began to go only in Norwegian, and the program developed with his active participation became the aesthetic platform of the united theater. At the same time he wrote the plays The Warriors in Helgeland (1857), The Comedy of Love (1862), The Struggle for the Throne (1863); as well as the poem On the Heights (1859), which became the forerunner of the first truly principled dramatic success - the play Brand (1865).

The diverse activities of Ibsen in the Norwegian period were more likely due to a complex of the most complex psychological problems than a principled public position. The main one was the problem of material prosperity (especially since he married in 1858, and a son was born in 1859) and a worthy social position - his children's complexes undoubtedly played their role here.

This problem naturally connected with the fundamental issues of vocation and self-realization. Not without reason, in almost all of his further plays, one way or another, the conflict between the life position of the hero and real life is considered. And another important factor: the best plays by Ibsen, which brought him worldwide well-deserved fame, were written outside of his homeland.

In 1864, having received a writing scholarship from the Storting, which he sought for almost a year and a half, Ibsen and his family left for Italy. The funds received were extremely insufficient, and he had to turn to friends for help. In Rome, for two years, he wrote two plays that absorbed all previous life and literary experience - Brand (1865) and Peer Gynt (1866).

In theater studies and ibsenism, it is customary to consider these plays in a complex way, as two alternative interpretations of the same problem - self-determination and the realization of human individuality.

The main characters are polar: the inflexible maximalist Brand, who is ready to sacrifice himself and his loved ones for the sake of fulfilling his own mission, and the amorphous Peer Gynt, who readily adapts to any conditions. Comparison of these two plays gives a clear picture of the author's moral relativism. Separately, they were regarded by critics and the audience as very contradictory.

The situation with Peer Gynt is even more paradoxical. It is in this play that Ibsen demonstrates his break with national romance. In it, the characters of folklore are represented as ugly and vicious creatures, the peasants as cruel and rude people.

At first, in Norway and Denmark, the play was perceived very negatively, almost as blasphemy. G.H. Andersen, for example, called Peer Gynt the worst work he had ever read. However, over time, the romantic flair returned to this play - of course, mainly thanks to the image of Solveig.

This was largely facilitated by the music of Edvard Grieg, written at the request of Ibsen for the production of Peer Gynt, and later gained world fame as an independent piece of music. Paradoxically, but true: Peer Gynt, who in the author's interpretation protests against romantic tendencies, still remains the embodiment of Norwegian folk romance in the cultural consciousness.

Brand and Peer Gynt became for Ibsen transitional plays that turned him towards realism and social issues (it is in this aspect that all his further work is mainly considered). These are Pillars of Society (1877), A Doll's House (1879), Ghosts (1881), Enemy of the People (1882), Wild Duck (1884), Rosmersholm (1886), Woman from the Sea (1888), Hedda Gabler (1890), Solness the Builder (1892), Little Eyolf (1894), Joon Gabriel Borkman (1896).

Here the playwright raised topical issues of contemporary reality: hypocrisy and female emancipation, rebellion against the usual bourgeois morality, lies, social compromise and loyalty to ideals. Symbolists and philosophers (A. Blok, N. Berdyaev, etc.) much more, along with Brand and Peer Gynt, appreciated other plays by Ibsen: the Caesar and the Galilean dilogy (The Apostasy of Caesar and the Emperor Julian; 1873), When We, the Dead Awakening (1899).

An impartial analysis makes it possible to understand that in all these works Ibsen's individuality remains the same. His plays are not tendentious social ephemera, and not abstract symbolic constructions; they fully contain social realities, and extremely semantically loaded symbolism, and surprisingly multifaceted, whimsical psychological complexity of the characters.

The formal distinction between Ibsen's dramaturgy into "social" and "symbolic" works is rather a matter of subjective interpretation, a biased interpretation of the reader, critic or director.

In 1891 he returned to Norway. In a foreign land, he achieved everything he aspired to: world fame, recognition, material well-being. By this time, his plays were widely played on the stages of theaters around the world, the number of studies and critical articles devoted to his work could not be counted and could only be compared with the number of publications about Shakespeare.

It would seem that all this could cure the severe psychological trauma he suffered in childhood. However, the very last play, When We, the Dead, Awaken, is filled with such a poignant tragedy that it is hard to believe in it.

Henrik Ibsenone of the most interesting playwrights of the nineteenth century.His drama is always in tune with the present.Love for Ibsen in Norway is, if not an innate feeling, then probably arising in early childhood.

Henrik Johan Ibsen was born on March 20, 1828 in the small Norwegian town of Skien in the family of a businessman. After leaving school, Henryk entered the pharmacy town of Grimstadt as an apprentice, where he worked for five years. Then he moved to Christiania (Oslo), where he began to study medicine. In his spare time he read, drew and wrote poetry.

Ibsen became a playwright by chance when he was offered to work as a "writer of plays" for the Norwegian theater in the city of Bergen. INIn 1856, Ibsen's first play was successfully staged at the theater. In the same year he met Susanna Thoresen. Two years later they got married, the marriage was happy. In 1864, Ibsen received a writer's pension. In 1852-1857 he directed the first national Norwegian theater in Bergen, and in 1857-1862 he headed the Norwegian theater in Christiania. After Austro-Prussian-Danishth war, Ibsen and his family went abroad - he lived in Rome, Dresden, Munich. His first world-famous plays were the poetic dramas "Brand" and "Peer Gynt".
Ibsenhe was 63 when he returned to his homeland, he was already world famous. May 23, 1906 Ibsendiedfrom a stroke.

First workIbsen- an application for the pronunciation of the Word - the play "Catilina". This character of Roman history,in the generally accepted opinion, appearing as a symbol of the worst depravity, in the image of Ibsen he is not a scoundrel, but, on the contrary, a noble, tragic hero. This first play created the path for Ibsen, the path of the individualist, the rebel and the breaker of the rules. Unlike Nietzsche, the Ibsen rebellion wasnot to the glorification of instinct, but to the leap towards the spirit, towards transgression.An important difference between the position of Ibsen and Nietzsche in relation to women. The infamous “you go to a woman - take a whip” and “a man for war, a woman for a man” are quoted even by those who are far from philosophy. Ibsen, on the contrary, professes a kind of cult of a woman, he believes that a woman will throw off the shackles of unconsciousness before a man and that her path is no less individual.

This was especially vividly reflected in his works - "Woman from the Sea" and "A Doll's House". In the first, a successful couple of spouses are faced with the fact that the wife's longtime lover, "from the sea", is coming, who wants to take her away. This lover is a typical "man of instinct", a "barbarian", the exact opposite of her intellectual husband. The usual dynamics of such plots, as a rule, is unreasonably tragic, and as a result, the woman is either doomed to die or leave with a valiant conqueror. Her tossings, which are perceived as the horror of inevitability, suddenly turn out to be a search for her unrevealed individuality: as soon as the husband is ready to accept her choice and give her complete freedom, it turns out that the "man from the sea", that is, the unintegrated animus, is nothing more than a myth, and she stays with her husband. The plot, with such a cursory description, may seem banal, but its surprise and rebelliousness lies in the fact that it is the individuality of the wife who must be freed that is emphasized in every possible way, and her opportunity to stay with her husband appears only after he consciously lets her go. The key to the play is that he finds the strength in himself to overcome the "patriarch complex", that is, his social and biological rights of the owner, which have sprouted like poison from the Osirian aeon.

"" (1879) is one of Ibsen's most popular, interesting plays. In it, for the first time, a woman in world literature says 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 asserts the relativity of moral norms.Ibsen is actually the first to put forward the idea of ​​a free and individuating woman. Before him, there was nothing like this, and the woman was tightly inscribed in the patriarchal context of complete biological subordination and practically did not rebel against this.

The play "Ghosts" is, in fact, a family drama. It is about the fact that parental mistakes, as in a mirror, are reflected in the behavior of children, and, of course, about ghosts. But not those who live on the roof, but completely different. In Ibsen, these are living people who are not really trying to live, but simply exist in the proposed circumstances.

The main character is Mrs. Alving, the mistress of a large house, who has long been in love with the local pastor, but sacredly keeps the memory of her husband, the captain. And just as earnestly protects from the great feeling of the artist's son, who is seriously carried away by a pretty maid. The power of maternal love will turn him into the same as she herself, a living ghost.

« Peer Gynt"one of Ibsen's major playswhich has becomeclassicalthanks to Grieg.

Mark Zakharov:"Peer Gynt is a dramatic piece of news at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, which affirmed the foundations of existentialism. Simplifying the problem a little, let's say that Peer Gynt does not interact with individual characters - he interacts with the Universe. The whole world around him is Peer Gynt's main partner. The world, constantly changing, it attacks his consciousness in different ways, and in this cheerful whirlpool he is looking for only one, the only one that belongs to him.
I am interested in Peer Gynt, perhaps because I passed the “point of no return” and really felt that life is not endless, as it seemed to me in childhood and even after graduating from the Theater Institute. Now you can look at your own life like a chessboard and understand what squares my path went through, what I went around and what I got into, sometimes regretting what happened later. The main thing is to start correctly, and most importantly, to understand where it is, your Beginning. How to guess your only possible path through the labyrinths of life circumstances and your own beliefs, if you have them ... And if not? Find! Form! Reveal from the bowels of the subconscious, catch in the cosmic dimensionlessness. . . But sometimes what has already been found slips out of hands, leaves the soul, turning into a mirage, and then a new painful search awaits in the chaos of events, hopes, smoldering memories and belated prayers.
Our hero was sometimes written about as a bearer of the idea of ​​compromise. This is too flat and unworthy of the unique, at the same time, ordinary and even recognizable eccentric hero created by G. Ibsen. In Peer Gynt there is not only nonsense, and he is alive not only with folklore echoes, there is courage and audacity, there is rudeness and gentle humility. G. Ibsen presented to the world the image of a man about whom, as a Chekhov hero, it is very difficult to say who he is.
I started my directorial path when the “simple person” was highly valued and praised. It seems that now almost all of us, together with Dostoevsky, Platonov, Bulgakov and other seers, have realized the truth or have come closer to it - there are very difficult people around us, even if they pretend to be cogs, one-celled creatures or monsters.
So I wanted to talk about Peer Gynt and some other people, without whom his unique life could not have taken place. Just tell it in your own way, not too seriously, as best we can. And, thinking about the most serious things, to avoid pretensions to obligatory profundity... The idea is dangerous. Composing a play today is a risky business." MARK ZAKHAROV
In 1874, the leading Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen conceived the idea of ​​staging a new play. He invited the young but already well-known composer Edvard Grieg to work together on a new production. The music for the performance was written in six months. This piece of music consists of 27 parts. This production is called Peer Gynt.

At the premiere in 1886, Ibsen's drama and Grieg's music were equally successful. This was the second birth of Ibsen's play. Then the music became more popular, and its separate concert life began.

Peer Gynt is a play about a young man. Per left the house and his girlfriend and went in search of happiness. He met many things along the way. He wandered the world, meeting evil trolls and frivolous women, strange hunchbacks and robbers, Arab sorcerers and much more. One day, Gynt enters the cave of the mountain king.The author in a single image showed two elements: the mountain king himself and his evil forces. Among them was the princess, who, with her dance, is trying to attract the attention of Per.

Peer Gynt, the hero of our time

Peer Gynt is an odious figure. A reason for people to have fun and gossip. Everyone considers him a slacker, a liar and a talker. This is how he is perceived even by his mother, who was his first muse-inspirer (from her fairy tales, with which she overfed him in childhood, Per's imagination gained freedom and constantly walks up and down):
Peer Gynt hardly distinguishes reality from dreams, reality for him is ready to turn into fiction at any second, and fiction to become truth.

In the village, Pera is hated, laughed at, and feared (because they don't understand). Some consider him a sorcerer, although they speak of it with a sneer.
Nobody believes him. And he continues to brag and tell stories about himself that have long been known to everyone.
In fact, all these tales of Gynt are just a free presentation of ancient legends. But in this "lie" the poet's ability to reincarnate is manifested. Like Hoffmann's cavalier Gluck (either a madman or an artist who gets used to the image), Gynt recreates legends. He is not just a spectator, listener or performer, but a re-creator, giving new life to seemingly dead images and myths. “The whole history of the earth is a dream of me,” Peer Gynt might have exclaimed.
Thus, in Peer Gynt, the traditional problem (misunderstanding by society of an artist who creates a new reality and forms new cultural forms) develops into a manifesto for all people of art who go in their search to the end, regardless of any boundaries, conventions and establishments.
That is why this text was so loved, for example, by symbolists. After all, as Khodasevich said in his programmatic article, symbolism was “a series of attempts, sometimes truly heroic, to find a fusion of life and creativity, a kind of philosophical stone of art. Symbolism stubbornly sought in its midst a genius who would be able to merge life and creativity together.
And, in particular, this is why Ibsen's Peer Gynt is still relevant today.

Fear of being creative

On the other hand, it is his narcissism and laziness that make Peer Gynt a universal and timeless type. Ibsen attributes narcissism to the nature not of a person, but of a troll. But the troll is a symbol. The concentrated embodiment of everything lower in a person - vanity, selfishness, lust and other vices.
20-year-old Per wanders around the outskirts of his village, fighting, drinking, seducing girls, telling stories about his adventures. And as soon as narcissism takes possession of him, he meets trolls: the Woman in Green and the Dovre Elder. From them, he learns the difference between a troll and a human. And he prefers to remain a man - an outcast among people, and not a king among trolls.
This whole scene with the trolls (and the rest of the scenes in which fabulous, mythical characters take part) takes place in the imagination of the hero, and not in the outside world. And if you notice quite clear indications of this in the text, then Peer Gynt can be read as a completely realistic work in which trolls, like other mythical characters, only represent various functions of Gynt's inner world.

The catch is that it never occurs to Per Gynt to write down his daydreams. This allows literary critics to speak of him as a hero, in which Ibsen expressed, they say, the whole inconsistency of a person of the 19th century - a person who has forgotten about his destiny. Buried talent in the ground.
Peru seems to be just too lazy to write down his dreams. Although it’s more likely not even laziness, but “fear of a clean slate.”
When Peer Gynt sees how someone cuts off his finger so as not to join the army (that is, in fact, out of cowardice), he comes from this act in genuine admiration (Ibsen's italics):
You can think, you can wish
But to do? An incomprehensible thing...
This is the whole Peer Gynt - he fantasizes, wants to do something, but does not dare (or is afraid) ...
However, returning to the mentioned article by Khodasevich and the Symbolists, one can look at Gynt as a poet who does not write, but only lives his poetry. On the artist who creates a poem not in his art, but in life. All the same reason why the poets of the Silver Age revered Ibsen as one of their gurus.
But is it enough for an artist to create his own life without creating any other works? The answer to this question is precisely given by Peer Gynt.

Mythology of Gynt

Solveig renounced everyone to be with Peer Gynt. Per goes to build the royal palace, happy and proud of the appearance of Solveig. But suddenly he runs into an Elderly woman in green rags (she is dreaming of him, apparently because he is too proud of his "victory" over Solveig, because the trolls appear just at those moments when Per is overcome by vanity). The old woman demands that he kick Solveig out, presents him with a freak son as her rights to his house, but he answers her to this: “Get out, witch!”. She disappears, and then Peer Gynt begins to reflect:

"Bypass!" - the crooked one told me. And, she-she
That's right. My building collapsed.
Between me and the one that seemed mine
From now on, the wall. There is no reason to be excited!
Bypass! You have no way left
Which you could go straight to her.
Directly towards her? There would also be a way.
But what? I lost the Holy Scripture.
I forgot how repentance is interpreted there.
Where can I get edification in the forest?
Remorse? Years will pass by,
As long as you are saved. Life will become ugly.
Break the world into pieces, immensely dear to me,
And put together worlds from fragments again?
You can hardly glue a cracked bell,
And what blooms, you dare not trample!
Of course the devil is just a vision
She disappeared from sight forever.
However, bypassing ordinary vision,
An unclean thought entered my soul.

This is how Per addresses himself before leaving Solveig until old age.
To use the terminology of the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard (close in spirit to Ibsen), Per is trying at this moment to move from the aesthetic stage of existence to the ethical one, to take responsibility. And this is the guarantee of his future salvation. After all, throwing Solveig, he does the only great thing he is capable of - forever "keeps himself in her heart." Then he can already live as he pleases (which, in fact, he does). The deed of his life is complete. Purpose fulfilled. The poem has been written.
Solveig is the muse of Peer Gynt, a woman who "lives while waiting", remembering him as young and handsome. Great Mother, Soul of the world, Eternal femininity (both in Goethe's and in the symbolist meaning of this mythologeme). She kept the image of Peer Gynt in her heart and, in the end, thereby saved Peer.
Gynt is always under the patronage (under cover) of the Eternal Femininity. At the end of the battle with the trolls, he shouts: "Save me mother!" And after that, the conversation with Crooked, in a blurry formless voice from the darkness, ends with the words of the barely breathing Crooked: “Women keep him; Dealing with him is difficult."
The curve is just a symbol of “laziness”, “fear”, “inactivity” of Per (“The great curve wins without a fight”, “The great curve awaits victories from peace”). On the one hand, it is a function of the psyche, and on the other, it is the Norwegian god of the underground (the god of the underground depths, embodied most clearly in the hero of Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground, in Slavic mythology, this is Ovinnik).

Mythology bubbled through Ibsen. Perhaps he thought that he was writing about the decline in which contemporary Norway found itself, about the smaller Norwegians (this is how Peer Gynt and other Ibsen texts are often interpreted). But he got a manifesto to overcome Christianity and return to paganism. (Symbolism is a special case of such overcoming.)

If we look at Ibsen's works as a reflection of their time, then only in the sense in which Carl Gustav Jung spoke about works of the visionary type in his work "Psychology and Poetic Creativity". Those in which (often bypassing the will of the author) expressed the spirit of the times. At the time of writing a visionary work, the author becomes a kind of mouthpiece of the collective unconscious, passing through himself information coming from the most reserved depths of human experience.
“For this reason, it is quite understandable when the poet turns again to mythological figures in order to find an expression corresponding to his experience. To imagine that he is simply working with this material that he inherited would be to distort everything; in fact, he creates on the basis of first-experience, the dark nature of which needs mythological images, and therefore eagerly reaches for them as something related in order to express himself through them, ”writes Jung.
Undoubtedly, the works of Ibsen (especially Peer Gynt) belong to this visionary type.
Christianity, paganism and Nietzscheanism

Starting from the Fourth act, everything in Peer Gynt takes place on a different level - there are no mythical monsters and voices from the darkness. Peer Gynt (now a wealthy slave trader) who has matured and outwardly settled down teaches:

Where does courage come from?
On our life path?
Without flinching, you must go
Between the temptations of evil and good,
In the struggle, take into account that the days of struggle
Your age is by no means completed,
And the right way back
Save for a late rescue
Here's my theory!

He informs his drinking companions that he wants to become the king of the world:

If I did not become myself, - the lord
A faceless corpse will become over the world.
Something like this was the covenant -
And I don't think it's better!

And to the question “What does it mean to “become yourself?” replies: to be unlike anyone, just as the devil is unlike God.
The question of what it means to “be yourself” torments Peer Gynt, haunts him. This is the main question of the play. And in the end, a simple and exhaustive answer is given to it. An indication of the only opportunity for a person to “be himself” ... (And the only opportunity for an artist to truly connect poetry with life.)

In literary criticism, Peer Gynt is often contrasted with another Ibsenian hero, the priest Brand (from the drama of the same name). And they say that it was Brand who always remained “himself”.
If Gynt for the literary tradition is a typical “neither fish nor fowl” person, some kind of rare egoist who shied away from his destiny all his life, as a result of which his personality (and his life) fell into pieces, then Brand is usually interpreted as a beloved the hero of Ibsen, they see in him a kind of ideal of a person - whole and complete.
And indeed, he is not at all tormented by the search for his own Self. But if you look closely, it turns out that Brand is not even a person at all. He is a kind of superhuman soulless function. He pushes to fall all the weak that surrounds him, he is ready to sacrifice his life and the lives of others, because ... because he considers himself (so he decided!) God's chosen one. These Brandian sacrifices are no longer even Abraham's sacrifices, not "faith by the power of the absurd" that Kierkegaard spoke of, but the rational decision of a strong-willed proud man. Crowleyan arbitrariness. Nietzschean pride.
Therefore, it is logical that Brand perishes, unlike Peer Gynt, who is completely Christian, although in a pagan entourage, saved.
This salvation occurs already in the fifth act, which again turns out to be filled with symbolic visions. When Peer Gynt escapes into the forest (into the depths of the unconscious), he merges with nature so much that the element, personified by the poet's imagination, begins to tell him his own thoughts about himself:

We are songs, you are us
Didn't sing at the top of my lungs
But a thousand times
Silenced us stubbornly.
In the soul of your right
We are waiting for freedom.
You didn't let us go.
You have poison.

Biblical parable of the talents. A slave who buries his talent in the ground and does not increase his master's wealth falls into disfavor. The button maker (a mythological character whose function is to take the soul of Peer Gynt, which is not worthy of either hell or heaven) for melting down, says:

To be yourself means to be
The fact that the owner has revealed in you.

Per in every possible way wriggles, excuses himself, dodges. But the accusation (self-accusation) looks quite impressive: he is a man who has not fulfilled his destiny, buried a talent in the ground, who did not even know how to sin properly. All he has created is an ugly troll who has spawned his own kind. Meltdown or hell - punishment seems inevitable anyway...

Per wants Solveig to condemn him, as he believes that it is to her that he is most to blame. But in the face of Solveig, the convict meets the Vestal Virgin. Solveig names Peru the place where he always remained himself:
In faith, in my hope and in love!
End. The rescue. The button maker is waiting behind the hut...

“I spoke above about the attempt to merge life and work together as about the truth of symbolism,” Khodasevich writes. - This truth will remain with him, although it does not belong to him alone. This is the eternal truth, only most deeply and vividly experienced by symbolism. Like Goethe's Faust, Peer Gynt avoids retribution at the end of Ibsen's drama, because the main creation of his life was love.

Saved a high spirit from evil
God's work:
"Whose life in aspirations has passed,
We can save him."
And for whom love itself
The petition does not freeze
He will be a family of angels
Welcomed in heaven.

And as a final point:

Everything is fast-
Symbol, comparison.
The goal is endless
Here is achievement.
Here is commandment
All truth.
Eternal femininity
Pulls us to her.

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