Drama and Commitment by Gerald Rabkin (review)

1966 BOOK REVIEWS 449 The reader can only conclude that Fjelde wanted to make Peer Gynt more modern than the Victorian Archer had done. This is commendable, but there are certain pitfalls awaiting the unwary, and Fjelde has at times let his guard down and fallen in. Ibsen was no prude-he considered everything from infidelity to rape and incest, including whoring and fornication, but he did not dwell upon these matters for their own sake, and he always maintained a sense of propriety. Perhaps we don't want this, and somehow feel that Ibsen also should "get with" our own time. We are by now inured to movies where there are no clothes "to put off." But it is simply a question of taste whether the Seter Girls should ask Peer "You really perform?" (p. 78) or whether The Woman in Green (p. 110) should say to Peer that she would be with him and Solveig when you "put off your clothes." There are times when Ibsen allows his characters to exaggerate beyond reason, as in the first scene, where Peer's mother scolds him for being gone "months on end" (manedsvis) which Fjelde renders as "in my busiest month." Ase's charge against Peer is so patently unreasonable that he can well ignore it, but Fjelde's specific rendition changes the situation materially. Fjelde, on occasion, thus tones Ibsen down where he should not. More frequently, however, he generalizes where Ibsen is specific, and he prefers the vigorous, exaggerated term where Ibsen is moderate . Where Ibsen respects a fact as a fact, Fjelde too often makes something of it. He does not merely state what Ibsen states, but feels impelled to let the reader know what Ibsen meant-and at times he is wrong. Fjelde chooses the general instead of the concrete term more often than Archer does. This is the basic difference between the Fje1de translation on the one hand and Archer's translation and Ibsen's original on the other. In spite of my strictures, it must be remarked that Fjelde's translation has many good features. The tone of it is contemporary rather than Victorian, but there is some unfortunate use of slang. Although Archer's translation is more faithful to the original, Fjelde's version has more flair and at times a better rhythm. I have noted a number of sustained passages in Fjelde which are pleasing to read, but right in the middle a horrible, prosy line will intrude ("not only no game. but you lose your gunl" p. 32). Not all of these can be caught, admittedly, but they are there, nevertheless. Fjelde often switches tense on Ibsen, which is not successful. His rhythm is of variable quality and his rhyme, where it occurs, is only partly satisfactory. For anyone who has devoted so much time, energy, and interest to a work as Fjelde certainly must have, something more than fault finding is in order. My criticisms are offered as suggestions to improve a valiant attempt. A reworking of three or four hundred lines, or somewhere between four and five percent of the text (my criticisms probably do not apply to more than ten or fifteen percent of the text), would produce an acceptable translation. SVERRE ARESTAD University of Washington DRAMA AND COMMITMENT, by Gerald Rabkin, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana, 1964, 322 pp. Price $6.00. As indicated by the subtitle, "Politics in the American Theatre of the Thirties," Mr. Rabkin's book is a study of the dramatic forms and themes in the Depression decade. Although a careful investigation of political history and stage method has gone into the making of the book, the author's principal interest is neither 450 MODERN DRAMA February historical nor theatrical, but literary. When we read here of the Popular Front, we bnd only very brief mention of Hitler, whose machinations it was intended to thwart. When we read of the Group Theatre, we are not reminded of the company 's innovations in stagecraft. The omission of such details does not impair the values of the study, however, 'because as designed it does not need them. At the most we might accuse the author...