Ibsen, Henrik (1828-1906), the foremost dramatist of Norway. Although intensely Norse in his writings and sympathies, it is doubtful whether he had any Norwegian blood in his veins. His great-great-grandfather, Peter Ibsen, was a Danish sea captain who settled at Bergen and married a German. Of the three succeeding Ibsens, one married a Scotch woman; two married Germans. Ibsen's father married the daughter of a wealthy German merchant at Skien and himself settled down into the mercantile business. Here Henrik was born March 20, 1828. Skien was a simple, wooden village of about 3,000 people. Among Henrik's earliest recollections, so he tells us, was the marketplace and the church with high steps and noteworthy tower facing it. The town pillory, the town hall and the lock-up, the madhouse, and the school buildings were arranged around this square. Among other juvenile recollections, Ibsen speaks of a "white, stout, heavy-limbed angel with a bowl in his hand, on week-days suspended high up under the roof of the church, but on Sundays, when children were to be baptized, lowered gently into our midst." He tells, also, of losing a coin - a christening gift - through a crack in the home. Floor Boards were pulled up and search made, but the coin was not recovered. Young Henrik was scolded so thoroughly, so he relates, that for months, whenever he saw the village policeman coming toward the house, he scuttled away and hid under the bed. He was not much of a hand for outdoor sports, but on St. John's Eve joined other boys in begging, borrowing, and stealing tar barrels with which to make a huge bonfire.
While other boys were playing Ibsen was fond of making cardboard men and women, and setting them up in postures as though acting. He also acquired quite a reputation for magic. This he effected by means of a large dry goods box, inside of which he bribed a younger brother to hide and pull the strings. In this way, apparently by means of wise incantations, he made his Punch and Judy figures answer all sorts of questions, ridiculous and otherwise. The lad inside the box made the figures nod or shake their heads according to the exigencies of the occasion. It is said that Ibsen succeeded in guarding the deception well.
Ibsen gathered the best of literary material, that is to say, local material, at first hand. He attended the public and Latin school of his native town. His father having failed in business, he was apprenticed to an apothecary in Grimstad, a shipping town of about 1,000 people. Here Ibsen gathered much of the material afterward used in his dramas. There was but one drug store, one barber shop, and one inn. The conversation was confined largely to such thrilling questions as to whether such and such a sloop had sailed, and what might be the character of its cargo. The apothecary's shop is the town exchange, where the idlers gather. "Everyone knows his neighbors, inside and out; no jot of a man's private affairs is concealed. And they all salute one another, the richest man gets the lowest bow, the next richest the next lowest, and so down the scale to the common laborer, who only gets a nod, while he himself stands respectfully, hat in hand." The well dressed stranger is received with courtesy, for none can tell how great a personage he may be.
Ibsen was a young fellow of intensely democratic ideas. He chafed against the restraints of society. He was willing enough to behave himself, but he did not want to be required by society to do so. Public sentiment irked him. He felt that it was a tyrant requiring the individual to do this or that, whether he would or not.
While studying Cicero's Orations and Sallust's Catiline with a view of a future examination as an apothecary, he became impressed with the idea that Catiline was a persecuted hero. Instead of taking Cicero's and Sallust's view that Catiline was a desperate, unprincipled adventurer, the prey of unholy passions, he idealized him as
A man whose heart is stirred in freedom's cause,
The foe of all injustice and all wrong,
Friend of the feeble, crushed by unjust laws,
And filled with courage to o'erthrow the strong
In fact, during his whole life Ibsen was at war with the authorities of church, state, and the well established notions that govern social intercourse. In 1850 he went up to Christiania to finish studying for his examination. Here he may have studied diligently, but it is evident that he gave the greater part of his time to the theaters and to politics. At all events he was never heard of as an apothecary.
He published a number of poems and wrote a number of plays that appear to have accomplished little for his pocketbook; but in one way or another he got forward. He was for five years director of the theater in Bergen. A group of patriotic Norwegians, among them Bjornson, organized the Norwegian theater in Christiania and invited him to become its director, this in 1857. It was the purpose of Ibsen and his friends to create a Norwegian stage, on which Norwegian subjects should be treated by Norwegian dramatists and represented by Norwegian actors. Although the project failed after a time for want of financial support, it had a prodigious effect on the national spirit. It would not be going too far to say that the separation of Norway and Sweden in 1905 may be traced to the work of Ibsen and his friends in Christiania. During the Christiania period of his life Ibsen had a small salary from the government, which later was changed to a pension permitting him to travel.
His later years were spent chiefly in Germany and Italy. He enjoyed a comfortable income from his dramas and the sale of his books. Norwegians consider Peer Gynt and Brand his greatest poems. The former is sometimes styled the "Scandinavian Faust." Of his dramas, The Pillars of Society and A Doll's House or Nora are perhaps the most popular. The former follows up the hypocrisy of the principal personages in a small town such as Grimstad or Skien.
From the general tone of his writings and the sarcastic nature of his criticisms, Ibsen has been styled the "Scandinavian Carlyle." Critics who read him in the original say that his style is as crabbed as that of Carlyle, his meaning as difficult to pick out as that of Browning. He died at Christiania May 23, 1906, and was honored by a funeral at national expense.
QUOTATIONS FROM IBSEN
Men of science should not be allowed to torture animals to death. Let them begin with journalists and politicians.
Unfortunately, our best thoughts have been thought by our worst rascals.
Our whole bourgeois society rests upon a soil teeming with the pestilence of lies.
Wish and will. Our worst offenses arise from the fact that we confound these two things.
There will be a new nobility. Not the nobility of gold or of money, of talent, or of knowledge. The nobility of the future will be the nobility of courage and of will.