Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism (review)

{ 269 } Book Reviews ers. Promisingly, Clemons cites several examples of ways in which marginalized Texans have asserted their cultural value and sought to subvert the dominant brand of the Lone Star. Even though the traditional brand dominates the cultural and historical landscape, women and Texans of all backgrounds are making their voices heard. To this end, Leigh Clemmons has given us a book that not only shows how culture is controlled and branded, but also how it can be reclaimed. Eric Love — Tennessee Wesleyan College \ \ Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism. By Toril Moi. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. 396 pp. $29.95 paper. Although Toril Moi—a literary and theatre theorist of Norwegian extraction— feels Ibsen is suffering from underexposure due to his distorted reputation as a turgid realist, the plethora of Ibsen productions staged around the globe each year suggest otherwise. Moi, a talented and precise writer, opens Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism with the assessment that Ibsen has fallen out of favor in scholarly circles, and in terms of the attention he receives in theatre production, the issue is not that he is being ignored but that he is being misunderstood in terms of style, technique, and content. Moi provides some interesting solutions to the problem of how we should look at Ibsen as moderns in a postmodern context. Moi’s objective is to show the role Ibsen played in the revolt against idealism , and she does so by tracing the history of European idealism in painting , holding up Ibsen’s work—with both its idealist and increasingly skeptical tendencies—to the worldview that was evolving in nineteenth-­ century pictorial art. The book is also rich with excerpts of correspondence with other advocates of skepticism and realism, including Danish critic Georg Brandes, the foremost champion of Ibsen’s work. The opening chapters dedicate some time to defining modernism and even postmodernism as opposed to the antisensual,antihuman,and religiously tinged idealism that dominated prior to—and during—Ibsen’s time. Here Moi’s biases in favor of the great“realism-­ that-­ is-­ more-­ than-­ realism”that Ibsen shaped is reflected in some negative assertions concerning not only idealism but also { 270 } Book Reviews postmodernism and, perplexingly, even modernism itself. She betrays an impatience with formalism as well, although she makes intriguing comments on Ibsen’s aesthetic innovations throughout the book. The second part of the book casts light on such important early Ibsen works as the epic poem Terje Vigen, which Moi finally opens up for non-­ Norwegians— one of the most important national, romantic nondramatic works from his pen. After an exposition of his first produced idealist play, Cataline, Moi discusses Ibsen’s short play The Burial Mound, Saint John’s Night, and his less­ -­ than-­ successful national romantic dramas such as Lady Inger. The conflict between idealism and skepticism emerges first in the verse drama Love’s Comedy. Moi somewhat strangely glosses over almost completely the great dramatic poems Peer Gynt and Brand, which she refers to as “closet dramas.” She has, however, another large project to take on in this transitional period for ­ Ibsen. Moi’s work with Emperor and Galilean is historically timely now that Brian Jonston’s strong modern translation of the play has become available and has begun to be taught in English-­ speaking countries. Here we get a thorough background on the importance of this transitional play. The emperor in the play is Julian the Apostate, who sought the ideals of antiquity, and so turned back to the old gods, and turned away from the religion of “love” embodied by Roman Christianity. Applying Stanley Cavell’s ideas to this major work, Moi asks: “Why is Julian theatrical? I think of theatricality as a skeptical recoil against the discovery that we are separate from each other” (212). The discovery that “we cannot know the other,” together with a modernist “loss of faith in language,” have brought on an existential crisis (212). Rather than facing a world without meaning in rejecting Christianity,Julian retreats to the Greco-­ Roman pantheon of earlier times. He tries to “stage” the Dionysian rites, but the result is nothing more than a“theatrical”facade...