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Updated: June 20, 2025
Three-fourths of the action of The Master Builder, Little Eyolf, John Gabriel Borkman, and When We Dead Awaken, consists of what may be called a passionate analysis of the past. Ibsen had the art of making such an analysis absorbingly interesting; but it is not a formula to be commended for the practical purposes of the everyday stage. But a situation is not an idea.
Then the sons of Hunding draw together a great army to avenge their father. Hard was the fight betwixt them; but Helgi goes through the folk of those brothers unto their banner, and there slays these sons of Hunding, Alf and Eyolf, Herward and Hagbard, and wins there a great victory.
He found his characters and his themes in modern life and in his native land; and the social dramas followed one another in steady succession, 'Pillars of Society' , 'A Doll's House' , 'Ghosts' , 'An Enemy of the People' , the 'Wild Duck' , 'Rosmersholm' , the 'Lady from the Sea' , 'Hedda Gabler' , the 'Master-Builder' , 'Little Eyolf' , 'John Gabriel Borkman' and 'When We Dead Awaken' .
We may hazard the conjecture that no drama gave Ibsen more satisfaction to write, but for enjoyment the reader may prefer less prodigious agility on the trapeze. If we turn from the technical virtuosity of Little Eyolf to its moral aspects, we find it a very dreadful play, set in darkness which nothing illuminates but the twinkling sweetness of Asta.
Macbeth is about a middle-aged couple as much as Little Eyolf. But if we ask ourselves what is the real difference, we shall, I think, find that it can fairly be stated thus. The old tragedies of marriage, though not love stories, are like love stories in this, that they work up to some act or stroke which is irrevocable as marriage is irrevocable; to the fact of death or of adultery.
John Gabriel Borkman dies of heart seizure, resulting from sudden exposure to extreme cold. In the case of Solness and Borkman, death is a quite natural and probable result of the antecedent conditions; and in the case of Eyolf, it is not a way out of the action, but rather the way into it. There remain the three cases of suicide: Rebecca and Rosmer, Hedda Gabler, and Hedvig.
If the strange and fascinating creations of Ibsen's last years were to be judged by ordinary dramaturgic canons, we should have to admit that in Little Eyolf he was guilty of the latter fault, since in point of sheer "strength," in the common acceptation of the word, the situation at the end of the first act could scarcely be outdone, in that play or any other.
Eric-raude, or red-head, the son of Thorwald, was long persecuted by a powerful neighbour named Eyolf Saur, because Eric had killed some of Eyolf's servants; and at length Eric killed Eyolf likewise.
<i>How Grettir left Fairwoodfell, and of his abiding in Thorir's-dale</i>. But Grettir and his men took horse and rode up to the fell, for they were all wounded, and when they came to Fairwood there was Eyolf left; the farmer's daughter was out of doors, and asked for tidings; Grettir told all as clearly as might be, and sang a stave withal
This circulation in so small a reading public as that of Denmark and Norway was unprecedented, and it must be remembered that the simultaneous translations into most of the languages of Europe are not included. Little Eyolf, which was written in Christiania during the spring and summer of 1894, was issued, according to Ibsen's cometary custom, as the second week of December rolled round.
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