Ibsen in America

IBSEN IN AMERICA1 BY EINAR HAUGEN One of the most interesting aspects of literary history is the story of how and why an author is accepted outside his own country. Some authors are popular at home, but never penetrate abroad, while others succeed abroad and fail at home. We have here a problem in international cultural relations which invites research and speculation. Why is it that a nation takes one foreign author to its heart and rejects another who may be just as good? In some cases the story of an author's acceptance resembles a searchlight that illuminates the profile of a national psychology. Henrik Ibsen is one of the relatively few Scandinavian authors who have enjoyed and still enjoy the interest and respect of a large American public. But Ibsen's name has always been associated with controversy. To this day there is an undercurrent of dislike and criticism on the part of some observers, and it would be wrong to say that he is a popular author. In his own lifetime Ibsen represented a challenge to literary and social smugness. His plays raised controversies which are almost unequaled in literary history. He divided the waters in such a way that men were either for or against him, and it is not always easy to perceive the real reasons for their passionate attacks or defense. Perhaps one could say that the extent of his acceptance was a test of literary and intellectual maturity. In America, as in so many other countries, the period of controversy was followed by one of acceptance. Ibsen became a classic of the stage. There is a small library of articles and books written about him in the United States alone. No published history of the drama excludes his name. But the danger now is that he who once was ahead of his time will 1 This study is a revised version of a lecture given by invitation at the Ibsen Semicentennial May 29, 1956, organized by the city of Oslo. This and other lectures given at the festival were printed in Edda for 1957. 1 2 EINAR HAUGEN be held by some to be old-fashioned. The very ideas which once made him controversial now tend to obscure his art in the eyes of some critics, who declare that he no longer has a message. Yet he lives on, and a growing number of critics appreciate the inherent power of his dramatic art, which still brings his figures to life when they are competently presented on the stage.2 Even in his homeland it took Ibsen a long time to win acceptance and admiration. He was practically driven away from Norway in 1864 at the age of thirty-six, and it was not until he had written "Brand" two years later that he won recognition as an ornament of his country. His first victories abroad, in Denmark, were closely followed by a great popularity in Germany in the 1870's and 1880's. He came like a breath of fresh air to the heavily burdened generation of Bismarck and William I. With the publication of "A Doll's House" and "Ghosts" he became the acknowledged literary leader of the radical movement in Germany. At this time he was still practically unknown in the Romance and Englishspeaking world. The year 1889 was a turning point, when his fame penetrated from the German-Scandinavian area into England. The introduction of Ibsen to England was a crucial test, which revealed how great the distance was between Continental and English culture. In the age of Queen Victoria the English Channel was a very broad stream indeed, which would not let an author pass without carefully filtering him and cleaning him up. The English were nursed on a tradition of gentility and Puritanism which made them shun and abhor the French and scorn the German authors of their time. A writer like Ibsen, who challenged the conventions of middleclass life and set a new fashion in the writing of intellectual plays, could not immediately win a hearing in the Englishspeaking world. The English were shocked by his ideas, repelled by his characters, and deaf to his humor. It...