Forest City press. (Forest City, Potter County, D.T. [S.D.]) 1883-19??, 1906-07-05
TIT Hyg MDw @g~ wy soW
BY GEORGE HENRY PAYNE.

- FVGINFtI FA W.
New York SPECIAL: Was It 1hsen the
poet, lbscn the dramati.t, or Ibscn the
war god of so.f-raith, who, dying
in the land he fought into a loving
mood. left behind the most lasting marh
on this swiftly moving age?
The poet had the b,t.erest battle. for i;
came in the time of youth, when hope was
high and sympathy might have seemed
swceter than success, but it was the poet
whose triumph was most complete. 1bscn
had lived many years, enjoying the fame
of being his coun;ry's national hero and
the reputation of being one of the intel
lectual Tl,ans OF the day.
lbsen the G:anlatist was a later figure
that is. the dlamatis. that is generally
known to .hc thcatergoing world. 1t gives
one a curious pulse of the greatness oil the
man to road, ever at this day, Edmund
Gosses's impression of him written in the
early seventies, setting forth with cnthu-
siastic sympathy his claims to !mmor-
tality as he sketched the matter of peer
Gynt,' Brand" and Emperor and
Galilesn." Then The Dolls House" had
not been written, nor Ghosts nor IAN
Enemy of the Pcop.e'-that NeiStersinger
Of ~plays-nor "Rcsmersholm," nor John
Gabriel Borkman." nor yet when We
Dead Awake'-that play that people would
understand.
Undcrstand? As If it were necessary to
understand, as If there were anythins, in
the world worth while understanding, as
If there were any one In the world who
really does, simply and alone. understand.
lbsen, the poet of the ~~urid-that is, the
world that had once rejected h!.n-ac-
cepted carly. Then came ,hsen, the dra-
Matist. to take UP new cudEcls and f.gnt
new battles. ana Ibsen that was almost
identical with +hn JbCnD vt1 ,-..,i. .
self-relianco. seif-iinding. an lbsen tina,
was half Carlyle. some Goethe and wholly
Emerson. People who might have seen
the dranatist as a man who formed new
lines Of construction, who worked out new
rules OF simplicity, drew back at a phil
csophy that Was expressed with lizzie
reservation.
In objecting to Nora Hcimer's passionate
declarations for personal freedom, Mrs.
AlvinG's plea for ruth. Borkman's belief
that the sin against self WAS greater than
the sin against society, in ohjecting to tire
eternal symbolism OF his playa-the sym
boiism that is etcrnally true in Nfe-there
was ignored the fact that this vas the
man who rs far back as 1869 wrote to his
friend and critic. George I3raadce:
Il have written IL play in which there is
neither q monolcgie nor an aside"
surely that one thing alone might have
marked him the man OF his dey, as much
IL beie!actor OF humanity through the
stage as was Sophoclcs whom he iat,<e !
duced q third actor into the drama. |
But the ibsen. the war god Of individual !
ism-that is whore the real struggle came.
Nowhere did he more passionately cry for
personal freedom than IN the awful play
'1nosts'-fol!owing 1t quickly with his
reply to critics in Tho Enemy of the
No abuse was too great for the
play. and the abuse and vitlpcration oven i.
the author into his home, and his
reply was the simple declara tion Of his |
hero. Stockman: i
THE strongest ma IN earth is ne VINO
most alone.'
Friends, home country, rc,igion-yhat
are they? They fit. they help. they soften
u they weaken more often than they
strengthen. They lull the soul to sleeD
the rules and regulations and short
to forgetfulness that have crown olt
of ages-the man with the idea in him
must fight them-not with them.
There arc people OF childish intellect ana
feminine methods of thinking who saw in
lbsen a gigantic pessimist, a successor In
popular terms to all that is contured up by
the popular conception of Arthur schocp-
enhauer.
They forget. as even Thoughtful people
forget, that S~chocpenhaucr Ia
aever regarded by serious people as a ps-
fimist and. that his sole claim to fame
rests on his metaphysical dicta-his% state