The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1902-12-21

| Loves Comedy"-which set all Norway
about his ears (lse2), THE Pretenders'
(is64). .Brand--his poetic masterpiece
Cses), peer Gynt' (lse7)-this transcript
ton Of a Norwegian. base. worldly. I'M
| pudent Faust, has enough fantasy and
satire in IL TO scuttle an empire Of fatuous-
ness; .The League of Youth (is69)
| Emperor and Gailean" (ls83)-his great
| historic drama treating of Julian and his
reputed apostasy: 'The Pillars Of Society
| Gs77) and in 1879 Ghosts" and the pros
| dramas-surely an extraordinary output
| of work for a choleric grumbler and SO
called man of parochial ideals. And every
| play and poem cost him spiritual birth
] pang.
| Ibsen lived abroad from Norway the
| greater part OF his life, and did not return
| home until 1891 His sclf-impoSed exile
| brought him to Rome, to Dresden, to
| Munich. to Paris He has mingled with all
| manners of men and women, people OF
| the highest culture. celebrated people.
| To describe him a. provincial author
| who, in the corner of his native village
| fashions local portraits. is to miss entirely
| the keynote Of the man. He is world
| force now and has had the honor Of Icing
| abused by his uncritical contemporary,
| Lyof Tolstoy. in company with Shakes
/ peare, Beethoven. Wagner-and OF all
persons Rudyard kipling!
] IbSen's types are often suburban, hut.
| then, whether We like TO acknowledge IL
| or no, the majority of city folk is suburban
| in Intelligence. Citizenship in a metropolis
| IL no brevet of mental freedom or wide
| culture. Ibs.ns characters are all Norwe-
| gian and they are as normal as the creatures
| Of any great dramatist-o often they are
middle-Clas- TO a tiresone degree. The
| fact is that the Ibsenites have been quite
a. annoying and We presume necessary
as the Browning societies and the Wag-
neritcs. They have diverted attention
| from their master to themselves, drawing
down some Of hi, liEhtnngs from the clouds
! to CLEAN about their own unaureled
skulls. His imitators. as is always the case,
| have only caught the eXternals of his stage
| technique his marvellous economies Of
| time and place. his drastic dialogue and
| Lis prediction for unpleasant people.
| His intellectual range his gripping magnet
| ism. his tremendous evocation of flesh
| and-blood beings. none Of these qualities
Hauptmann. Sudermann. Pinero have been
able to absorb. To bend the bow of
llysses--'
We have been listening to Ibsen ut second-
! hand for the last decade "a did the French
when they accepted the diluted Wagnerisms
Of Massenet, Joueieres. Bruneau and the
| rest. When the composer himself was
heard-what a revulson. When the real
lbsen is apprehended what Gathering
and upsetting Of the money -lenders' tables
in the temple Of dramatic art The genera
ton that is Just beginning to Use its eyes
and ears will not take words Of well-meant
warning from superannuated advisers.
II will read lbsen and find that the Bogie
Man 40 deliberately fashioned by his enc
mics does not exist at all
II is always the army of fanatics and
"cranks" that make men wary of genius.
Like the buzzards that follow a victorious
army. these hungry disciples repel by their
harsh announcements, their ridiculous
affectation OF the exoteric. That same
dramatic critic. Mr.. Edward A. Dithmar,
long ago declared that Ibsen needed inteli-
gent interpreters. And Mr.. Dithmar ia
far from being a partisan. Ibsen does
wound us at times. for he rings his gaunt
knuckles on the hollow metal Of our ideals
ethical or social, and we protest aloud
But he is first the artist He never breaches.
Dumas fis built his famous plays about a
moral problem instead Of posing charac-
acters for their inevitable clash This
lsben never does. You always feel that
his situations arise from the play Of char
acter. His dramatic scheme. without dis
playing the technical brilliancy of Sardou,
is closer spun web. Beside Ibsen's viable
men and women, Sardous creatures are
all hollow gesticulation and empty sonorous
rhetoric, mere passionate marionettes,
not Of real blood and force And il Ibsen
seems pessimistic, he never converts his
stage into bloody shambles; IL he appears
TO mock at sacred emotions, he never gives
us questionable scenes of seduction How
differently he would have treated Pnero's
Iris we can see in Heddd Gdbier If he il
| with women in their plea for equal privileges
(Heimer says: NO man sacrifices his
honor even for one he loves;- Nora replies:
Millions of women have done so All
how that cuts he does not hesitate to con-
front Nora with Heddd, or Heddd with the
calm, sensible Gina Ekddl of "A Wild Duck
This power of objectivity betokens the
master mind, the myriad mind of genius
And despite his absence OF sympathetic
comment, his withdrawal of self in his
delineations you always feel the heart beat
| of fellow man. There is ray of hope in
A Dolls House." in Little Eyolf." In
| Ghosts" alone is the theme pursued to a
pitiless conclusion, As if the stern spirit of
| Aeschylus regarded the awful tragedy
| of the Airings. Here Ibsen has simply
! let nature have its way. 1t is not pleas ant,
| and neither ia Lear" pleasant!
Is lbsen an anarch-using that misun-
| derstood word in its true sense as connecting
| the unfettered government OF the indi-
vidual? Yes. a. is Emerson, a. is Shakes
pesre, Goethe and all the choir Of liberal
genius. II Ibsen has any message it is
this; Be true to myself, a commonplace of
the copybooks, And this ia not Of the
mountaineering variety of anarchy! po-
litically, he has a horror Of paternal gov
ernments realizing the dangers to the de-
| velopment Of the individual in all forms
| of socialism. He mocks at trade unionism.
as he expends his most contempt uous
satire upon the lickspittle politicians that
| infest all so-called movements of reform.
Like Nietzsche he is stumbling block to