Ibsen, born Henrik Johan Ibsen in 1828 in
Skien, Norway, was the eldest of five children after the early death of an
older brother. His father, Knud Ibsen, a product of a long line of sea
captains, had been born in 1797 in Skein and married Marichen Cornelia Martie Altenburg,
a German daughter of a merchant, in 1825. Though Ibsen later reported that
Skein was a pleasant place during his youth, his own childhood was not
particularly happy. Described as an unsociable child, his sense of isolation
was increased at the age of sixteen when his father's business was found to be
in such disrepair that everything had to be sold to meet his creditors. On top
of this, a rumour, to which young Ibsen was privy, began to be circulated that
Henrik was the illegitimate son of another man. This fear (never proved)
manifested itself in a theme of illegitimate offspring in Ibsen's later work.
After Knud's business was possessed, all that remained of the family's former
wealth was a dilapidated farmhouse at the outskirts of Skein.
At the farmhouse, Ibsen began to attend a
small middle-class school where he cultivated a talent for painting, if nothing
else. In 1843, at the age of fifteen, Ibsen was confirmed and taken from
school. Though he had declared his interest in becoming a painter, Ibsen was
apprenticed to an apothecary shortly before his sixteenth birthday.
Leaving his family, Ibsen travelled to
Grimstad, a small, isolated town, to begin his apprenticeship where he studied
with the hopes of gaining admissions to the University to study medicine. (He
also fathered an illegitimate son by the servant of the apothecary.) Despite
his unhappy lot, Grimstad is where Ibsen began to write in earnest. Inspired by
the revolution of 1848 that was being felt throughout Europe, Ibsen wrote
satire and elegant poetry. At the age of twenty-one, Ibsen left Grimstad for
the capitol. While in Christiania (now Oslo), Ibsen passed his exams but opted
not to pursue his education, instead turning to playwriting and journalism. It
was here that he penned his first play, Cataline. Ibsen also spent time
analyzing and criticizing modern Norwegian literature.
Still poor, Ibsen gladly accepted a
contract to write for and help manage the newly constituted National Theatre in
Bergen in 1851. Untrained and largely uneducated, Ibsen learned much from his
time at the theatre, producing such works as St. John's Night. The majority of
his writings of this period were based on folksongs, folklore, and history. In
1858, Ibsen moved back to Christiania to become the creative director of the
city's Norwegian Theatre.
That same year, Ibsen married Suzannah
Thoresen, with whom he fathered a child named Sigurd Ibsen. Though his plays
suggest otherwise, Ibsen revered the state of marriage, believing that it was
possible for two people to travel through life as perfect, happy equals. During
this period, Ibsen also developed a daily routine from which he would not
deviate until his first stroke in 1901: he would rise, consume a small
breakfast, take a long walk, write for five hours, eat dinner, and finish the
night off with entertainment or in bed. Despite this routine, Ibsen found his
life in Bergen difficult. Luckily, in 1864, his friends generously offered him
money that they had collected, allowing him to move to Italy. He was to spend
the next twenty-seven years living in Italy and Germany. During this time
abroad, he authored a number of successful works, including Brand (1866) and
Peer Gynt (1867).
Ibsen moved to Dresden in 1868 and then
Munich in 1875. It was in Munich, in 1879 that Ibsen wrote his groundbreaking
play, A Doll's House. He pursued his interest in realistic drama for the next
decade, earning international acclaim; many of his works were published in
translation and performed throughout Europe. Ibsen eventually turned to a new
style of writing, abandoning his interest in realism for a series of so- called
symbolic dramas. He completed his last work in exile, Hedda Gabbler, in 1890.
After being away from Norway for
twenty-seven years, Ibsen and Suzannah returned in 1891. Shortly afterwards, he
finished writing The Master Builder and then took a short break. In late 1893,
in need of moist air to help cure her recurring gout, Suzannah left for
southern Italy. While his wife was away, Ibsen found a companion in a young female
pianist, Hildur Andersen, with whom he spent a great deal of time and
corresponded with even after SuzannaWs return. Ibsen's relationship with
Andersen was characteristic of his larger interest in the younger generation;
he was famous for seeking out their ideas and encouraging their writing.
After suffering a series of strokes, Ibsen
died in 1906 at the age of seventy-eight after having been unable to write for
the last few years of his life.
IBSEN THE REBEL
In a letter to George Brandes, shortly after the Paris
Commune, Henrik Ibsen wrote concerning the State and political liberty:
"The State is the curse of the individual. How has the
national strength of Prussia been purchased? By the sinking of the individual
in a political and
geographical formula The State must go! That will be a revolution that will
find me on its side. Undermine the idea of the State, set
up in its place spontaneous action, and the idea that spiritual relationship is
the only thing that makes for unity, and you will start the elements of a
liberty which will be something worth possessing."
The State was not the only bete noire of
Henrik Ibsen. Every other institution that, like the State, rests upon a lie
was an iniquity to him. Uncompromising demolisher of all false idols and dynamiter
of all social shams and hypocrisy, Ibsen consistently strove to uproot every
stone of our social structure. Above all did he thunder his fiery indictment
against the four cardinal sins of modern society: the Lie inherent in our
social arrangements; Sacrifice and Duty, the twin curses that fetter the spirit
of man; the narrow-mindedness and pettiness of Provincialism, that stifles all
growth; and the Lack of Joy and Purpose in Work which turns life into a vale of
misery and tears.
So strongly did Ibsen feel on these
matters, that in none of his works did he lose sight of them? Indeed, they
recur again and again, like a Leitmotif in music, in everything he wrote. These
issues form the keynote to the revolutionary significance of his dramatic
works, as well as to the psychology of Henrik Ibsen himself.
It is, therefore, not a little surprising that
most of the interpreters and admirers of Ibsen so enthusiastically accept his
art, and yet remain utterly indifferent to, not to say ignorant of, the message
contained in it. That is mainly because they are, in the words of Mrs. Alving,
"so pitifully afraid of the light." Hence they go about seeking
mysteries and hunting symbols, and completely losing sight of the meaning that
is as clear as daylight in all of the works of Ibsen, and mainly in the group
of his social plays, "Hedda Gabler", "The Pillars of
Society", "A Doll's House", "Ghosts", and "An
Enemy of the People."
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