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The Corpse and the Cargo: The Hegelian Past in Ibsen's Naturalistic Cycle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2021

Brian Johnston
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Extract

      All the dead voices…
      They speak all at once
      Each one to itself …
      To have lived is not enough for them
      They have to talk about it
      To be dead is not enough for them …
    Waiting for Godot

      We are in for a sequentiality of improbable possibles…
    Finnegans Wake

Contrary to usual assumptions, Ibsen's cycle of 12 naturalistic plays, from Pillars of Society to When We Dead Awaken, is extremely learned work, closer to the writings of James Joyce or T. S. Eliot than to the typical drama of modern realism. The cycle is filled with the sense of history, the accumulations of the spirit of man. Its learning is deeply ingrained in its art, dictating form as well as content: it is unlike the learning of, say, Man and Superman, which is more or less on the surface for the audience's immediate comprehension and enjoyment.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Drama Review , Volume 13 , Issue 2: Naturalism Revisited , Winter 1968 , pp. 47 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © 1968 The Drama Review

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References

1 For the term “Naturalistic Cycle” and for much critical, stylistic and editorial advice, I am very greatly indebted to Rolf Fjelde.

2 The Phenomenology of Mind, tr. & ed. by J. B. Baillie (revised second ed., London: 1931). All references to the Phenomenology are to this edition.

3 Hegel on Christianity, ed. Richard Kroner (New York: 1948), p. 47.

4 Phenomenology, p. 93.

5 Ibsen's address “To the Reader” in the Danish edition of the simultaneous Danish/German edition of his collected works, begun in 1898.

6 Oxford Ibsen, tr. J. W. McFarlane (London: 1963), Vol. V, p. 126.

7 The Norwegian for “spirit” (aand) is-suspiciously like the word for “duck” (and). See “The Metaphoric Structure of The Wild Duck”—my article in Contemporary Approaches to Ibsen, Oslo: 1966.

8 For my account of Rosmersholm see Drama Survey, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Fall, 1967) pp. 181-220.

9 For a valuable account of some of the mythological details in this play see: Erik Østerud: Naar Vi Døde Vaagner paa Mytologisk Bakgrunn, Ibsen Aarbok 1963-64. This, with John C. Pearce's “Hegelian Ideas in Three Tragedies by Ibsen,” Scandinavian Studies 34/1962, pp. 245-257, would usefully supplement the present study.

10 Irene's name is from the Greek for “Peace.” Her “shadow” the Deaconness pronounces the Christian-Latin “pax vobiscum” over her death.

11 Grimm, Jacob, Teutonic Mythology (New York: 1966) Vol. III, p. 968.Google Scholar

12 Phenomenology, p. 89.

13 Phenomenology, p. 47.

14 An excerpt from Henrik Ibsens realisme, “Ibsen the Realist,” can be found, in translation, in Discussions of Henrik Ibsen, ed. McFarlane (Boston: 1962), pp. 70-82