Los Angeles herald., 1890-05-05
MONDAY, MAY 5, 1890.
A LITERARY PORTENT.


accepted exemplars of genius in all we'll
known eras of literature, school of fic-
tion and drama has sprung up of late
signalized by extremes which may per-
haps, with some propriety, be called the
erotic and the vapid, most of the produc-
tions of the former class merging in the
latter. In the present article we intend
to take brief glance at the methods and
some of the works of Henrik Ibsen,
Scandinavian writer, who has made one
of the hits of the age, and who has made
it, in our Judgment ON exceedingly slen-
der material.
Ibsen has favored the dramatic form
for his muse, and it is said that some of
his esoteric and frightfully dull plays are
being actually performed on the stage of
some eccentric peoples. A poem by
Martin Farquhar Tupper is a thing
of surprising interest compared to
the sprightly dialogues that are the
mainstay OF Henrik Ibsen's plays. To
take a representative one, the "Doll's
House," lot of people come on the
stage, the sets being elaborately de-
scribed, and drool away for hours. The
plot of the piece turns on the wife's hav-
ing forged her own fathers name to
Yiootte in order to raise money to take her
sick husband to Italy to recuperate his
health, which possibly auspicious result
is accomplished. To do this she has
parted with the note to man who had
himself committed forgery, who was
an employe in an institution of which
her husband was appointed the head,
and who dismisses the forger-money-
lender, against the entreaties OF the wife,
over whom her forged note is held IN
terrorem. The fellow reveals the forgery
to the husband, and he quite naturally
indulges in little complaint about the
wretched plight in which he finds him
self. She has an idea that on his dis
covery of the forgery he will assume the
offence himself, but he turns out to be
regular son of Adam, and seems inclined
to scold little. She is unable to for
give his unwillingness to proclaim him
standing that she has lot of innocent
children, who could not possibly have
been guilty Of their fathers lack of
guilt.
The whole thing is pitched in the very
highest grade of dull mock heroics. The
dialogue is stupid all the way through,
except when it is wicked. During the
course of it the wife, who is preparing
for a masquerade ball, slaps an old gen.
tleman, who is very much enamored
with her, ON the cheek with a
pair of her clocked stockings,
asks him if he likes them, and inquiries
further if he thinks they will fit her.
Such delicate conversations and actio
are not often held either on the stage or
in polite drawing rooms between gen
tleman and lady. There is not a
sprightly passage in the whole alleged
drama, and the talk is largely taken up
with the so-called equivocal position of
woman and the inherited consequences
of a peculiar class of diseases, of which
the scriptures say their punishment
shall descend unto the third and fourth
generations.
"Ghosts" is another of these delight
fully dull dramas, and in this a mother
puts in a great deal of disquisition on
matters which are generally confined to
medical specialists and to the owners Of
certain proprietary medicines. The
wind-up is lugubrious in the extreme,
the son going daft, and varying the we'll
worn formula of wanting the earth by
clamoring for the sun. The conclusion
of the play leaves us in doubt as to
whether this helio-variation of moon
shine ended in the death of the promis-
ing boy or in his immurement in a
lunatic asylum. The many pages of
vapid dialogue, however, admit of the
widow giving lurid picture of the de-
pravity of her husband, who evidently
belonged to the eclectic guild OF Kings
David and Solomon.
A third drama is taken up with the
vagaries of respectable member OF
society who has admitted into his family
woman with advanced ideas. He has
wife named "Beate," who soon be-
comes a dead-beat, for she goes off to a
mill-pond in sight Of the family man
sion, and browns herself. She has g
sermonizing brother, who applies him
self to talking the widower to death
for, after lot of vapid sublimities OF the
woman, who confesses to having goadec
Beate to suicide, they go off to the mill
pond and join her, becoming "dem'o
moist, unpleasant bodies," as the re
gretted Mantilini would say. AS there
were only two dramatis persona left it il
hoped they were happy. Beate's brother
certainly was, for all it needed to insure
him supreme bliss was to leave him il
possession OF his dearly beloved bazoo
which he was ready to employ at al
times.
The only drama of Ibsen's which W.
have encountered in which anybody
winds up better or happier is 'PiIlars o
Society,"" but even that would make .
VI r. y. " & 4; 81 Is {.