Ibsen, Heroism, and the Uncanny

I

In his "Second Impression" of Henrik Ibsen and his work, from 1882, the Danish critic Georg Brandes summarizes a conception of the dramatist's attitude and literary strategy that still belongs to the standard repertoire of Ibsen criticism. Gradually, after having reconsidered the idealism of some of his early plays, Brandes claims, "a superb idealistic [ideal] (or moral) suspiciousness became his muse" (45-46). And he adds, "In Ibsen's eyes the average man is small, egoistical, and pitiful. He looks upon him, not from the purely scientific, but from the moral point of view, and in his character of moralist, he dwells far more on the badness of man than on his blindness and foolishness" (49). Ibsen's pessimism, which cannot be denied, is consequently "not of a metaphysical, but of a moral nature" (53). The negative interpretation of Ibsen's gallery of male protagonists – from Catiline, Brand, and Peer Gynt to the gloomy Titans of the late plays (characters like Solness, Borkman, and Rubek) – is well in line with Brandes's conception: Ibsen has constructed these characters with a strategy of moral and social unmasking in mind; his intention has been to expose human self-delusion and baseness. This pattern of interpretation has enjoyed a widespread popularity during the last forty years or so, not only in Scandinavia and Germany, but also to a certain extent in the Anglo-American world of Ibsen criticism.¹ Brand is regularly castigated as a moral terrorist with whom no sympathy whatsoever is possible; the portraits of Solness and Borkman are considered as Ibsen's critical unmasking of the cynicism of the capitalist spirit; and in Johannes Rosmer and Arnold Rubek, the critics adhering to Brandes's paradigm discover not only sexual impotence and narcissism but also an ugly attitude towards women. In short, the master of suspicion is above all a master of psychological and social criticism; but underneath the harsh texture of Ibsen's plays, the critic may also find some countervalues that give an extra strength to this merciless art of suspicion, namely the central values of modernity: truth, freedom – and love. As Georg Brandes puts it, Ibsen's moral pessimism is "based on a conviction of the possibility of realising ideals [. . .] through struggles, defeats, and chastisement" (53).

Authorial intention has had a bad reputation in literary hermeneutics since the days of Wimsatt, Warren, and the other American and European New Critics. However, if we for once pay attention to Ibsen's own comments on some of his works and characters (scarce as such comments may be in the writings of an author who became more and more reticent on the subject of his own art), the picture of moralistic indignation has to be nuanced. When Ibsen claims in an autobiographical letter written 28 October 1870 to Peter Hansen that "Brand is myself in my best moments" (qtd. in Ibsen, "Brand: Commentary," Ibsen, Oxford 443), such a statement is not a sign of disapproval. A similar expression of solidarity with his own protagonist is found in the answer Ibsen is said to have given when he was asked about the meaning of his late play The Master Builder. After having mentioned the decision of Solness and Hilde "to build a castle in the air and to live together in spirit," Ibsen does not offer any negative or critical comment on what so many critics have taken to be a megalomaniac folie à deux. On the contrary, he maintains that "[t]his lifts him [Solness] up higher than before, to do things he had not been able to do for a long time (symbolically). But he stakes his life on it – and is killed. But was it so mad if it cost him his life, if he did it for his own happiness and only then, for the first time, achieved it?" (qtd. in Meyer 695-96).

Such remarks and comments indicate that Ibsen took his own protagonists far more seriously than the school of suspicion in Ibsen criticism has given him credit for. To this we have to add that, although the great majority of his protagonists meet...