Ibsen's Forsaken Merman: Folklore in the Late Plays by Per Schelde Jacobsen and Barbara Fass Leavy (review)

Book Reviews PER SCHELDE JACOBSEN AND BARBARA FASS LEAVY. Ibsen's Forsaken Merman: Folklore in the Late Plays. New York: New York University Press 1988. pp. xiv, 350. $42.00. When Peer Gyot tells the exciting tale of his ride through the air on a buck, we, like his mother Aase, soon realize that he is likening himself to the hero in the story of Gudbrand Glesue in Asbj¢msen and Moe's famous collection of Norwegian folk tales and legends, Norske Huldreeventyr og Sagn. We have long been aware of the folk elements in Ibsen's early plays such as Olaf Liljekrans. Brand, and Peer Gym. Even in later plays we pick up obvious references to witches (Rosmersholm), mennaids (Lady from the Sea), and trolls (The Master Builder), Several critics have gone further: Sigurd Hustvedt in his Ballad Books and Ballad Men (1930), Eric 0sterud in several articles noted in the excellent "Bibliography" in the volume we are considering, and finally Maurice Gravier in an important essay in Contemporary Approaches to Ibsen (1970-71), "Le Drame d'Ibsen et la Ballade Magique." Only with Jacobsen and Leavy's book, however, do we get serious consideration of the "deep structures" of folk tale in the later plays, plays often dealing with the psychology of the individual and the unconscious. As the authors put it in the preface: "If the unconscious is the realm 'hidden' from conscious awareness, then it is particularly appropriate that the hidden folk (Norwegian huldre] symbolize the place of unconscious or only partially conscious motivation" (ix). This they set out to prove at great length; the plays become intricate webs of allusion to folk tales of every kind. The reader often wearies of trying to keep the folkloristic patterns straight. The volume cannot be perused quietly for pleasure and instruction. But as a reference book it is valuable. However, it could be more valuable than it is. The first difficulty lies in the joint authorship. Jacobsen is a cultural anthropologist who reads Norwegian. Leavy is a literary critic who does not. Leavy is responsible for the "Introduction," leading us Book Reviews 149 into the later Ibsen's use of folklore through a fasCinating excursus on Rebecca West's sealskin trunk in Rosmersholm. This bewildering play is brought into dearer focus through " the revealing paradigm" (p. 3) of legends of the sealfolk. This is presented in prose which, although not spritely. is clear and unambiguous. Jacobsen is responsible for Part II of the book. He provides an analysis of the trylleviser, the magic ballads, largely from Grundtvig's edition of Dallmarks gamle Folkeviser. He then goes on to discuss, in prose that becomes increasingly turgid. " Marginal Maidens: the Image of Women in the Ballads" and " Ibsen and the Ballads." Jacobsen concludes this part with a discussion of Ibsen's seven last plays, Rosmersholm through When We Dead Awaken, from the point of view of the ballad literature just presented. Difficult reading, especially when compared with Leavy's major contribution to the volume; she is also concerned with the seven last plays! The book leads up to these two separate analyses of the final plays. I am sorry that this was done. Leavy writes in the " Preface" that "we essentially agree as to how to read the plays." Why not then provide a single analysis of each play, combining the insights and expertise of both Jacobsen and Leavy? But to ensure unifonnity of style, Leavy should have been given the responsibility of writing the whole book. Jacobsen, I think, is often guilty of serious reductioni~m, coupled with bad grammar, and unnecessary ambivalence. Here is just one example: "Rita is not a loving woman, in Ibsen's sense, she is an elf, a huldre, who seduced her victim by offering him gold and green forests and her physical attractiveness" (p. 150). Seductive though Rita is, she is more than an elf. And where does one put the parenthetical "in Ibsen's sense"? Does it go with the fITst part of the sentence: " Rita is not a loving woman"? or with the second pan: "She is an elf"? A semi-colon, called for anyhow in this compound sentence without coordinating...