The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-04-14
BY LEWIS WYNNE.

10y LIZ w 40 w A4NANA1s
THERE is, | protest, a vast amount
of unblushing humbug about these
centenary celebrations" which peri
odically bring out the literary jour
mails in a rash of large type adula-
ton.
How, for instance, would Henrik
Ibsen's grim shade behold the flap
doodle and the flummery that is be-
ing piled up to his pOsthumous honor
throughout the length and breadth of
Europe and forbear an ironical
chuckle?
He wore out his flesh trying to
teach men not to be dull brutes; his
countrymen and practically all the
world united in crying him down, and
only after long poverty-ridden years,
when grudging recognition was forth
coming, flung him a pittance 10 save
his aged body from the gutter.
His Unforgivable Sin.
Ibsen today is a great tradition
not so long ago, we'll within living
memory, he was a scandal and an
outrage. He committed the unfor-
givable sin of rending and exposing
bourgeois morality Therefore, Of
course, Ibsen instantly became every
thing that was foul. To mention his
name in polite society was indisereet,
to read his plays was daring, to see
them acted was indecent. Mr.. G..
Bernard Shaw (then a highly inn
proper person himself, who ran no
risk of the canonization which has
befallen him subsequently, wrote a
brilliantly impudent book called "The
Quintessenee of Ibsenism," which
made the bourgeois intellectuals sit
up and take notice.
But no matter what abandoned
Philistines like Mr.. G. Bernard Shaw
might say, Ibsen was "a crazy fan
attic /. !. crazy, cranky being .
not only consistently dirty, but deli
berately dull" they emphatically de-
clared through "Truth-"
Tabooed.
Thus, for a considerable period,
Ibsen was absolutely taboo. He was
not ''quate mace" But all this is
ancient history now and Ibsen has
entered the sacred limbo of the I'M
nortals. The DOLLS House" is no
longer the cherished Baedeker of a
militant feminist movement. Woman's
economic enslavement is gradually
passing and her postwar political
emancipation has set a "date" upon
the purpose of Ibsen's iconoclasm.
Mora" no longer constitutes a
prophetic study-a bold character
sketch Of the new woman. She is
with us in her millions, alive and forg-
ing further ahead than ever Ibsen's
speetacles saw. The outworn moral
ede which mora" flung on the fire
with such magnificent bravado has
almost disappeared in the quivering
flame of a new social morality with
which revolutionary minded man and
womankind are lighting up their
world.
IlI-Requited Genius.
Ibsen was born in Skien, in Nor
way. His early years were spent in
poverty and neglect Attached to a
small theatre in Bergen he was forced
to work as hack playwright and
general maid of all work in the
theatre. His first great historical
plays were laughed at, his work won
no recognition, and finally in 1864
ne fled abroad, working in Italy and
Germany for twenty-seven years, pro-
ducing the masterpieces which have
made him immortal.
In some ways Ibsen's subjects NAV
be said to date, the world has passed
on beyond the struggles of the Noras.
the self-tortures of the Hedda Cab
iers. But his people do not date.
They are as alive and as passionate
today as ever, only the conditions of
their struggles have changed.
"Great Vision"
To US the Importance and interest
of Ihsen's work lies in his great
imaginative vision of the forces of
rising capitalism. Such plays as the