Henrik Ibsen by David Thomas (review)

Book Reviews 50 5 Although not entirely new. Theatrewritings is an important volume, and even if irritated by its unconventional structure, everyone will find something illuminating in its content. RODNEY SIMARD, CALIFORNIA STATE COLLEGE, BAKERSFIELD DAVID THOMAS. Henrik Ibsen. London: The Macmillan Press 1983. Pp. xiii, 177. illustrated. $13.00; $3.95 (PB). This is a beginner's book. It is also a book which can be read with profit by the seasoned Ibsen student. The reason is not far to seek: the material has been carefully evaluated and artfully arranged. Qui bene docet, bene dividit. David Thomas teaches well. He divides his material into seven compact chapters. In the first chapter, "Life and Work," the approach to the plays is extrinsic and biographical. Central themes are indicated as they appear in one or (usually) more of the plays: "the theme of vocation and its place in human experience" (p. 8), "the clash between art and life, vocation and personal happiness" (p. 23), "man's desire for self·transcendence" (p. 9), "vibrant but thwarted eroticism" (p. 22), "an emotionally domineering mother who expects her son to compensate for the inadequacies of his father" (p. 4). These are related, judiciously, to Ibsen's life. Everyone recognizes the danger of this approach; Thomas does not push it farther than it will go. In the second chapter Ibsen is firmly placed within the literary and theatrical context of his day. National romanticism, Scribean techniques, the primacy of psychological conflict even in historical tragedies (advocated by Hermann Henner) are given their dues. Also noted is the importance for his future development of those sixty-seven productions in Bergen for which the young Ibsen was responsible. "In all his late plays, including his ostensibly naturalistic plays, Ibsen exploited the visual techniques of the TOII;Iantic theatre that he had tested out in his productions at Bergen'! (p. 35). Perhaps the most helpful chapter in the book is the third, "Philosophical and Aesthetic Ideas." Here we get potted Kierkegaard, Hegel, Brandes, Taine, and Zola which do not at all taste of the pot. We get clear, lively, and briefexpositions of the doctrines as they cast light on Ibsen's work, especially Brand, Peer Gym, and Emperor mid Galilean. Again, Thomas is judicious. There is no attempt, for instance, to thrust Ibsen's entire oeuvre into a Hegelian or Kierkegaardian straitjacket. Thomas has his own thoughts too, and they are eminently sensible: "Despite the different philosophical influences on Ibsen, and despite his changing understanding of the nature of determinism, what did not change was his commitment to the notion of human agency, freedom, and responsibility" (p. 59). The two central chapters of the book contain short, thoughtful studies of aUthe plays from Pillars ofSociety to When We DeadAwaken, with the exception ofAn Enemy 0/the People. The plays are arbitrarily divided into "Dolls' Houses" and "Symbolist Plays." John Gabriel Barkman is in the former category, while The Wild Duck is in the latter. The distinctions, I think, are not particularly helpful. But the discussions of individual 506 Book Reviews plays and the relations among them are very helpful. Thomas gives us not merely the received critical opinions, but his own, often remarkable, insights into plays he has meditated upon, taught, and directed for many years, He even gives us close readings of Ibsen's wel1-wrought prose and dramatic poetry (verbal and visual) inspired by precise knowledge of and sensitivity to the Norwegian texts. This he does best in the sixth chapter, which deals with the values revealed in various "classic" Ibsen productions from William Bloch's Enemy ofthe People to Peter Stein's Marxist Peer Gynt and Peter Hall's expressionist Johti Gabriel Borkman. Thomas sees "moments of intense emotion where the actors are expected to act out rather than state the essential meaning ofa given scene" (p. 153), thus revealing "the poem hidden in the poem" (p. 156). Some of Thomas's readings can be challenged. The painful confrontation between Mrs. Alving and Manders in Act 2 of Ghosts contains something other than "his feeble attempt at self~justification." It is his own tragic attempt to cope with his love for Helene Alving, a love...