The Dangerous Seductions of the Past: Ibsen's Counter-Discourse to Modernity

The Dangerous Seductions of the Past: Ibsen's Counter-Discourse to Modernity BRIAN JOH NSTON Culture is to set man free and help him be equal to his concept. (Friedrich Schiller) Ibsen adopted the theatre decisively as his medium under the aegis of Ole Bull's Norwegian (Norske) Theatre in Bergen. A fundraiser for this theater was held in 1851 in Christiania, and Ibsen wrote an enthusiastic verse Prologue for the occasion'in which he proclaimed dramatic art would awaken the Norwegian people from the long winter's sleep in which it had forgotten its glorious Viking heritage. Viking life had itself been a poem "of sword and shield," which then was sublimated into the art of the skald and minstrel. But then an "awesome winter fell over the north," the noble skald fell silent, "dedicated to death like one bewitched who has forgonen the word with which he can find release from his enchantment." There remained a "harp of longing" within the people who could never be satisfied by alien customs and arts. A native art alone could interpret the longing of the people and its forgotten music, and this art would sing both about the past and the re-awakened life of the present.I In the same year, somewhat more soberly, in defense of Paludan-MUller's poems against the criticism of Johan Weihaven, Ibsen strongly defends the use of ancient myths in modern literature, insisting" that their life continues into the present - especially as material for poets. These are, I think, the first expressions by Ibsen of the theme of the power of the past to awaken the life of the present. The cause of the new theater and of an awakened Norwegian cultural consciousness stretching back into the distant past were, therefore, intimately linked from the beginning. One impetus behind this venture was the Norwegian people's desire to be free from cultural dependence on Denmark, whose theater in Copenhagen was one of the most accomplished in Europe. To quote Bj~rnstjeme Bj~mson, also writing in 1851 , a Norwegian theater would permit Norway "to enjoy its own Model'll Drama, 37 (1994) 651 652 BRIAN JOHNSTON language and its own poetry on its own stage;" condilions which are essenlial if Norway is "to join the ranks of the other nations.'" Or, in Ihe words of MJ. Monrad in 1854, it originated in a conviction of "the deep national significance of Iheaters, the necessily of a truly national theater as a pan of the selfrevelation and development of nationality.'" Here, the "seIr' to be revealed and developed is an objective, collective one, and a national poet's self-determination would require an analysis of Ihis shared collective identity. We know from his own critical writings that the youthful Ibsen endorsed these nationalist aspirations, though he later was to look on them less ardently. The domain of national identity would be something Ibsen's an could share with his public in a form of mutual self-discovery. And il would better justify the founding of a national or Norwegian theater in which to perform the poet's work. For all its limitations as an orientation to the world, nationalism had one great advantage for the dramatic poet - it extended the audience's imagination beyond the immediate, contemporary world, the world busily revealed everyday in, say, Morgellhladet or Aftellhladet, and into a ~ider and imaginatively more resonant world of history, folklore and myth. Above all, it adds an alternative dimension - of time - to the experience of our identities. The presence of this living but exiled spiritual past, seeking to regain the stage of his theater and thus to regain its place in modern consciousness , is a fealure of Ibsen's drama from the earliest plays to Wilell We Dead Awaken. And this preoccupation of Ibsen with the recovery of the past is shared, for example, with the theaters of Richard Wagner and W.B. Yeats. It would be simplistic to attribute Ibsen's nationalism - apparent in the revised 1854 version of The Burial Mound as well as in the argument and imagery of Lady Inger of fl}str'at - to an attempt by the poet to ingratiate...