William Archer on Ibsen: The Major Essays, 1889-1919 ed. by Thomas Postlewait (review)

Book Reviews "7 How ironic that the revival in the sixties occurred only after both men were dead. The appendices indicate the time spread of Nathan's I241etlers to O'Casey and the latter's 167 to Nathan (not printed here but summarized by the editors). A lively, personal view of both men emerges from Curtiss's introduction and from the letters. Nathan wrote that "Behind every great dramatic critic you will find one or more great dramatists." The volume seems based on that premise. What emerges, though, is not some idea1 of greatness but two very lively writers trying to combat the commercialism of Broadway. Nathan' strikes a typical note of exasperation as he tries "shaming our producers for their fear and neglect of such superior plays as Cockadoodle Dandy et aI, And] shall continue to hammer at their thick skulls" (p. I 15). This volume demonstrates an unpleasant truth: a major playwright backed by an influential critic can be denied production by the haphazard censorship of numbskulls measuring all by their (fallible) box office expectations, almost as surely as he can be fettered by state censorship of regimes that measure art on1y by its use as propaganda. In both cases contempt for human expression through art prevails. ANDREW PARKIN, UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA. THOMAS POSTLEWAIT, ed. William Archer on Ibsen: The Major Essays, 1889-1919. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press 1984. pp. 323. $35.00. Thomas Postlewait has done a great service to the ever-widening community of Ibsen scholars in the English-speaking world. Everyone knows William Archer as the nrst great English translator of most of the Ibsen corpus, although his translations are often put down today as "stodgy" and "Victorian." ("Stodgy" they aren't. "Victorian" they inevitably are, just as Ibsen's Dano-Norwegian reflects the language of 19th-century Christiania rather than late 20th-century Oslo.) Most will know that Archer introduced Shaw to Ibsen's work and that together with Shaw, Edmund Gosse, and Philip Wicksteed, Archer defended Ibsen against a narrow-minded, noisy, and often obscene group of English reviewers. Only a few know the depth and range of Archer's critical work, which led the English public to ajust estimation of Ibsen's worth. Hitherto access to the many essays and reviews Archer wrote on Ibsen has been difficult. The reviews remain hard to find, buried away in such journals and newspapers as London Figaro, World, Pall Mall Gazette and St. James Magazine. Even Archer's major essays on Ibsen, scattered as they are in various journals like Fortnightly Review and Edda, remain virtually unknown. But now Postlewait has collected twelve of these major essays into one volume. The essays are arranged chronologically, and each one is given a headnote indicating its source and occasion and helpful footnotes, sometimes amplifying a bit, sometimes explaining a1lusions. A few titles will pique the interest of readers: "Ghosts and Gibberings,II "The Quintessence of Ibsenism: An Open Letter to George Bernard Shaw," "The Mausoleum of Ibsen:' "The Real Ibsen," "Ibsen's Apprenticeship," "Henrik Ibsen: Philosopher or Poet?" "Ibsen in His Letters," "Ibsen's Craftsmanship," "Ibsen's Imperialism." 1I8 Book Reviews Reading through the essays, covering a period of thirty years. reveals both the remarkable consistency and the remarkable acuteness of Archer's judgments. Archer, although concerned with Ibsen's genuinely realistic techniques, as opposed to the artificiality of Scribe and the piece bien jaite, never reduced Ibsen to a mere social philosopher or propagandist a La Briellx. The earliest essay, "Ibsen and English Criticism," has this to say: A grave injustice has been done him [Ibsen] of late by those of his English admirers who have set him up as a social prophet, and have sometimes omitted to mention that he is a bit of a poet as well. It is so much easier to import an idea than the flesh and blood, the imagination, the passion, the style in which it is clothed ... His originality lies in giving intense dramatic life to modem ideas, and often stamping them afresh, as regards mere verbal form, in the mint of his imaginative wit (pp. 16 & 17). Archer says much the same thing in his final essay, "The...