The Collected Works of Henrik Ibsen Vol. 05 (of 11)

The Collected Works of Henrik Ibsen Vol. 05 (of 11)

In a speech delivered at Copenhagen in 1898, Ibsen said: It is now thirty-four years since I journeyed southward by way of Germany and Austria, and passed through the Alps on May 9. Over the mountains the clouds hung like a great dark curtain. We plunged in under it, steamed through the tunnel, and suddenly found ourselves at Miramare, where the beauty of the South, a strange luminosity, shining like white marble, suddenly revealed itself to me, and left its mark on my whole subsequent production, even though it may not all have taken the form of beauty. Whatever else may have had its origin in this memorable moment of revelation, Emperor and Galilean certainly sprang from it. The poet felt an irresistible impulse to let his imagination loose in the Mediterranean world of sunshine and marble that had suddenly burst upon him. Antiquity sprang to life before his mental vision, and he felt that he must capture and perpetuate the shining pageant in the medium of his art. We see throughout the play how constantly the element of external picturesqueness was present to his mind. Though it has only once or twice found its way to the viiistage,[1] it is neverthelessfor good and for illa great piece of scene-painting. It did not take him long to decide upon the central figure for his picture. What moved him, as it must move every one who brings to Rome the smallest scintilla of imagination, was the spectacle of a superb civilisation, a polity of giant strength and radiant beauty, obliterated, save for a few pathetic fragments, and overlaid by forms of life in many ways so retrograde and inferior. The Rome of the sixties, even more than the Rome of to-day, was a standing monument to the triumph of medivalism over antiquity. The poet who would give dramatic utterance to the emotions engendered by this spectacle must almost inevitably pitch upon the decisive moment in the transitionand Ibsen found that moment in the reaction of Julian. He attributed to it more world-historic import than the sober historian is disposed to allow it. Gaetano Negri[2] shows very clearly (what, indeed, is plain enough in Gibbon) that Julians action had not the critical importance which Ibsen assigns to it. His brief reign produced, as nearly as possible, no effect at all upon the evolution of Christianity. None the less is it true that Julian made a spiritual struggle of what had been, to his predecessors, a mere question of politics, one might almost say of police. Never until his day did the opposing forces confront each other in full consciousness of what was at stake; and never after his day had they even the semblance of equality requisite to give the struggle dramatic ixinterest. As a dramatist, thenwhatever the historian may sayIbsen chose his protagonist with unerring instinct. Julian was the last, and not the least, of the heroes of antiquity. Ibsen had been in Rome only two or three months when he wrote to Bjrnson (September 16, 1864): I am busied with a long poem, and have in preparation a tragedy, Julianus Apostata, a piece of work which I set about with intense gusto, and in which I believe I shall succeed. I hope to have both finished next spring, or, at any rate, in the course of the summer. As regards Julianus Apostata, this hope was very far astray, for nine years elapsed before the play was finished.[3] Not till May 4, 1866, is the project again mentioned, when Ibsen writes to his friend, Michael Birkeland, that, though the Danish poet, Hauch, has in the meantime produced a play on the same theme, he does not intend to abandon it. On May 21, 1866, he writes to his publisher, Hegel, that, now that Brand is out of hand, he is still undecided what subject to tackle next. I feel more and more disposed, he says, to set to work in earnest at Kejser Julian, which I have had in mind for two years. He feels sure that Hauchs conception of the subject must be entirely different from his; and he does not intend to read Hauchs play. On July 22, 1866, he writes from Frascati to Paul Botten-Hansen that he is wrestling with a subject and knows that he will soon get the upper hand of the brute. His German editors take this to refer to Emperor and Galilean, and they are probably right; but it is not quite certain. The work he actually produced was xPeer Gynt; and we know that he had a third subject in mind at the time. We hear no more of Julian until October 28, 1870, when, in his autobiographic letter to Peter Hansen, he writes from Dresden: ... Here I live in a tediously well-ordered community. What will become of me when at last I actually reach home! I must seek salvation in remoteness of subject, and think of attacking Kejser Julian. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 66240
Author: Ibsen, Henrik
Release Date: Sep 8, 2021
Format: eBook
Language: English
Publisher: William Heinemann,1907
Publication Date: 1907
Publisher Country: United Kingdom

Contributors

Editor: Archer, William, 1856-1924