Liszt’s famous summary of Beethoven’s career – “L’adolescent, l’homme, le dieu” – accords well with what we perhaps feel ought to describe the career of any great artist: for surely, the more an artist experiences of life, the more profound and wise their vision of it must be; and the closer they are to death [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Ibsen’
25 Mar
“The Lady from the Sea”: a rich, rare Ibsen
19th century work about a married woman? File under “Trapped Inside a Marriage”. Emma Bovary, Hedda Gabler, Isabel Archer, Anna Karenina, Dorothea Brooke, Lady Dedlock … They’re all much of a muchness, aren’t they? “Trapped inside a marriage” – that’s what 19th century writers did awfully well. And if it’s Ibsen, they’re definitely trapped inside [...]
10 Jul
Initial impressions of Dante’s “Inferno”
It is presumptuous to set out to “review” something such as Dante’s Inferno. Even at best, what one reviews is not so much the poem itself, but one’s reactions to the poem. Entire books can be written – indeed, have been written – about how this poem, or the larger poem of which this is but [...]
7 Jul
People don’t do such things!
At the end of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, when it is revealed what Hedda has done, Judge Brack says: “But people don’t do such things!” And on that note of incredulity, the curtain descends. It is very daring to end the play on that note – especially a play such as this, which, despite its various [...]
5 Apr
Ibsen, the Master Builder
Ibsen is still often regarded as primarily a “social writer” – i.e. as a writer whose principal concerns were social themes, and whose principal interests were ideologies advocating social reform. And while some have praised him for this reason, many others see this as a weakness: for if one’s principal concern is the righting of [...]
