Henrik Ibsen

A well-known Norwegian playwright, theater director, and poet of the 19th century was Henrik Ibsen. He is one of the pioneers of modernism in Theater and is frequently referred to as "the father of prose drama." His most well-known pieces are Brand, Peer Gynt, An Enemy of the People, Emperor and Galilean, A Doll's House, Ghosts, Hedda Gabler, The Wild Duck, Rosmersholm, and The Master Builder.

Many in his time saw several of his plays as scandalous as European Theater was expected to set high standards for decency and family life. Ibsen's work explored the truths that were hidden beneath a lot of masks, exposing a lot of stuff that many of his peers found unsettling. It made use of an open mind and a critical eye while examining moral dilemmas and living circumstances. Surrealistic aspects are present in Peer Gynt, a drama that blends poetry and cinema.

Early Life and Youth

Playwright Henrik Ibsen radically altered the laws of drama in the late 19th century, bringing a realism that is still present in theaters today. He instituted a new system of moral analysis and steered the European stage out of its current state as a toy and diversion for the idle. Ibsen took his audience inside the houses of common people, where the wealthy kept their closely guarded secrets, instead of using fairy tale characters and improbable storylines. The conflicts that resulted from questioning presumptions and having direct conversations were then explored with sharp dialogue and meticulous attention to detail against a very authentic middle-class background.

On March 20, 1828, Henrik Ibsen—who is often regarded as the founder of contemporary prose drama—was born in Skien, Norway. Of the six children, he was the second. A large portion of Ibsen's early years were spent in poverty since his well-known merchant father went bankrupt when the young man was eight years old. He worked in theaters in Bergen and what is now Oslo (then called Christiania) between 1851 and 1864. Known as Catiline, it was Ibsen's five-act tragedy that he composed at the age of twenty-one. Catiline was composed in poetry, just like a lot of his earlier works.

Ibsen wed Suzannah Thoreson in 1858, and the two eventually had a son. According to Ibsen, a husband and wife ought to reside as equals and be free to pursue their own identities as individuals instead of just cohabitating. (His play A Doll's House makes this belief quite evident.) As such, those who disapproved of Ibsen's disregard for the institution of matrimony came after him.

Ibsen's work was disapproved of in some quarters of Norwegian society because, like his personal life, it frequently raised delicate societal concerns. Ibsen, who received a traveling grant and a salary from the Norwegian government, relocated to Italy in 1864 after feeling criticism in Oslo on both his personal and professional lives. Mostly residing in Germany and Italy, he traveled and lived abroad for the next 27 years.

Although Ibsen's early career as a playwright could have been more financially successful, he did acquire important experience during this period. Ibsen's first significant theatrical hit, a lyric drama named Brand, was published in 1866. He followed it up with Peer Gynt, another well-liked verse play. Ibsen became known as one of the most accomplished Norwegian dramatists of his day, thanks to these two pieces. Ibsen's masterwork, A Doll's House, was published in 1879 when he was residing in Italy. A Doll's House was composed in prose, in contrast to Peer Gynt and Brand.

It is largely regarded as a turning point in the history of realism, the theater-style that rejects idealized portrayals of life in favor of an accurate portrayal. Ibsen writes in prose about common, unexceptional individuals in A Doll's House, but he also uses the ideas and forms of classical tragedy. Ibsen's concern for women's rights and civil rights in general is also evident in A Doll's House.

Ibsen strayed from realistic play in his later works, focusing instead on psychological and subconscious issues. Consequently, symbols started to appear more frequently in his plays. He wrote several pieces during this symbolist era, including Hedda Gabler (1890) and The Wild Duck (1884). Ibsen's final play written while he was residing overseas was Hedda Gabler. His return to Oslo was in 1891. Two of his later plays are Little Eyolf (1896) and The Master Builder (1892). Ibsen eventually developed a debilitating illness that stopped him from writing. On May 23, 1906, he passed away.

Ibsen's Life and Works

Ibsen worked for the following few years at Detnorske Theater (Bergen), wherein he was a writer, director, and producer on over 145 plays. He released five new plays at this time, most of them mediocre. Despite his lack of success as an independent playwright, Ibsen learned a great lot during his time working at the Norwegian Theater. This expertise would come in handy for his future literary endeavors. In 1858, Ibsen made his way back to Christiania to take up the role of creative director for the Christiania Theatre. He went into self-imposed exile in Sorrento, Italy, in 1864 after leaving Christiania. It took him 27 years to return home, but when he did, he was already a well-known and rather controversial playwright.

Both Brand (1865) and Peer Gynt (1867), for which Edvard Grieg is most known for writing incidental music and songs, provided him the critical recognition and little financial success he was after. Despite having read passages from Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and seeing signs of his influence on Brand, Ibsen did not begin to take Kierkegaard seriously until after Brand. Ibsen read Either/Or and Fear and Trembling despite being initially irritated with his buddy Georg Brandes for equating Brand with Kierkegaard. A deliberate influence on Ibsen's subsequent play, Peer Gynt, was Kierkegaard.

Gaining confidence from his success, Ibsen started incorporating an increasing amount of his personal opinions and convictions into the play, experimenting with what he called the drama of ideas." His plays from the following series are frequently regarded as representing his "Golden Age," a time when he was most powerful and influential and the focus of intense drama throughout Europe. After moving to Dresden, Germany, in 1868, Ibsen spent years creating the play he considered to be his best work, Emperor and Galilean (1873), which dramatized the life and times of Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate.

Few others agreed with Ibsen, who always considered this play to be the foundation of all of his works, and his subsequent plays would go on to get far greater praise. After relocating to Munich in 1875, Ibsen released A Doll's House in 1879. The play is a harsh critique of the gender-specific marital roles that were prevalent in Ibsen's day. Another biting critique of Ibsen's society's morals, Ghosts (1881) tells the story of a widow who has concealed the bad aspects of her marriage from her pastor for the entirety of their time together. She married her fiancé in the hope that her feelings for him would change him, even though the pastor had persuaded her to do so in spite of his infidelity. However, he persisted in his philandering until the day of his death, and their son contracted syphilis as a result of his vices. It was thought unbearable to demonstrate how venereal illness might taint a respected family, even when the mention of the condition itself was scandalous.

Ibsen went even further in An Enemy of the People (1882). In past plays, contentious aspects played a significant role in the action, albeit on a smaller scale involving individual houses. In An Enemy, the community as a whole was the opponent, and disagreement took center stage. The play's main takeaway is that the lone individual is frequently "right" and superior to the crowd, which is represented as stupid and sheepish. Ibsen questioned the idea held by modern society that the community at large was a respectable organization that could be relied upon. Ibsen criticized the liberalism of the day in An Enemy of the People in addition to the conservatism of society.

He provided examples of how self-serving behavior might come from persons of all social classes. He wrote An Enemy of the People in response to those who had disapproved of his earlier work, Ghosts. The play's premise is a covert examination of how people responded to Ghosts' storyline. The main character is a doctor visiting a holiday area where a public bath is the main attraction.

The physician finds that the nearby tannery has poisoned the water. He anticipates receiving praise for rescuing the town from the terrifying threat of spreading illness to tourists. Still, instead, the residents label him an "enemy of the people," uniting against him and even hurling stones through his windows. His total exclusion occurs at the play's conclusion. The reader can see that catastrophe is ahead for both the community and the doctor.

His third play challenged ingrained ideas and beliefs, as audiences had come to expect from him by this point. However, this time, instead of criticizing society's mores, he targeted overzealous reformers as well as their idealism. Ibsen was always an iconoclast who was prepared to dismantle the beliefs of any political party, even his own.

Towards the end of his career, Ibsen shifted his focus to a more reflective drama that was less concerned with criticizing society's moral standards. In his subsequent plays, Ibsen tackled psychological difficulties that went beyond merely criticizing prevailing norms, as evidenced by Hedda Gabler (1890) and The Master Builder (1892). These later writings have attracted the attention of many modern readers who may find anti-Victorian didacticism outdated, oversimplified, or clichéd due to their objective, hard-edged analysis of interpersonal confrontation.

Ibsen's play Hedda Gabler is arguably the most performed, and the title part is still considered to be among the most difficult and satisfying for an actress to play today. While there are some similarities between Hedda and Nora in A Doll's House, many modern audiences and Theater critics believe that Hedda's intensity and drive are far more complex and less easily explained than what they perceive to be rather routine feminism in the character of Nora. Hedda Gabler and A Doll's House both feature female protagonists whose almost devilish energy proves to be both enticing and destructive for those around them.

Ibsen radically rewrote the principles of drama, incorporating a realism that Chekhov and other writers would embrace, and that is still evident in Theater today. Ever since Ibsen, it has been believed that a play's ability to question presumptions and address topics head-on distinguishes it as art as opposed to just amusement. Edmund Gosse and William Archer played a major role in bringing his writings to the English-speaking public.

Consequently, these had a significant impact on the youthful James Joyce, who, in his debut autobiographical book Stephen Hero, extols Ibsen. In many respects, Norway had changed since Ibsen had gone, even if he had returned there in 1891. In fact, he had contributed significantly to the social transformations that had taken place. Modernism was becoming more and more prevalent in public life as well as the Theater. Ibsen concealed his inspirations on purpose. But when asked subsequently what he had read before writing Catiline, Ibsen said that he had only read Adam Oehlenschläger and Ludvig Holberg, "the Scandinavian Molière," a Romantic tragedian inspired by Danish Norse sagas.

Death And Legacy of Ibsen

Following a string of strokes in March 1900, Ibsen passed away on May 23, 1906, at his residence at Arbins Gade 1 in Kristiania (now Oslo). Ibsen stammered his final words, "On the contrary" ("Tvertimod!"), after his nurse informed a guest that he was feeling a little better on May 22. The following day, at 2:30 pm, he passed away. Ibsen was laid to rest in the heart of Oslo, in the "Graveyard of Our Savior," known as Vår Frelsers gravlund.

Several nations, including Norway, observed "Ibsen years" to honor the dramatist's 100th birthday in 2006. A scene-by-scene analysis of the dramatic play Peer Gynt is now feasible thanks to the opening of Peer Gynt Sculpture Park in Oslo, Norway, this year in honor of Henrik Ibsen by homebuilding business Selvaag. Ibsen's last eleven-year residence was fully restored with its original furnishings, colors, and décor when it was reopened to the public on May 23, 2006, by The Ibsen Museum (Oslo).

Since 2008, The Dramatic Art and Design Academy (DADA), in association with The Royal Norwegian Embassy in India, has been organizing the annual "Delhi Ibsen Festival" in Delhi, India. It includes Ibsen plays performed in a variety of languages and styles by performers from across the globe. The 185th birthday of Henrik Ibsen was commemorated by Google with a doodle on March 20, 2013.

In 1978, the Ibsen Sesquicentennial Symposium—which commemorated Henrik Ibsen's 150th birthday—ended with the founding of the Ibsen Society of America (ISA). The elected Founding President was the eminent Ibsen critic and translator Rolf Fjelde, who also happens to be a Pratt Institute literature professor and the symposium's primary director. The ISA received certification as a charitable organization under New York state law in December 1979. Through talks, readings, screenings, conferences, and publications, it hopes to promote an awareness of Ibsen's works as texts and as stage, cinema, and other media productions. Every year, all members get an annual newsletter called Ibsen News and Comment.

Ivo de Figueiredo contends that "Ibsen is a part of the globe today. However, understanding the Danish cultural milieu from which he emerged, from which he freed himself, and from which he ultimately shaped his career is necessary to comprehend [Ibsen's] path out there." A difficult conversation took place between Ibsen's personal and artistic development and Danish Theater and literature.