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Updated: May 2, 2025
Paradise Lost would make a far better film than Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman, though Borkman is a dramatic masterpiece, and Milton could not write an effective play." He has in mind, no doubt, the pouring hosts of demons and angels. This is one kind of a Crowd Picture.
"Dust" is a pathetic little story having for its central idea what seems like a pale reflection of the idea of Ibsen's "Ghosts," which had appeared a few months before. It is the dust of the past that settles upon our souls, and clogs their free action. The special application of this thought is to the religious training of children:
Early in October he retreated, or rather fled, to Copenhagen, and thence to Munich, where he breathed again. Meanwhile, the extreme liberal faction among the students claimed that his action had meant that he was heart and soul with them, as against the reactionaries. A young Mr. Ove Rode, who had interviewed him, took upon himself to say that these were Ibsen's real sentiments.
Then Ibsen's letters, as revealers of the unseen mood, are particularly unsatisfactory. With rare exceptions, he remains throughout them tightly buttoned up in his long and legendary frock-coat.
The sensible thing, in spite of Ibsen's late disclaimer, is to suppose that, in the consciousness of his crudity and inexperience as a writer, he voluntarily sat at the feet of the one great poet whom he felt had most to teach him.
With the best will in the world, however, it is not easy to find full enjoyment in this gigantic work, which by some caprice of style defiant of analysis, lacks the vitality which is usually characteristic of Ibsen's least production.
It has always been, in the countries of Scandinavia, the best known and the most popular of all Ibsen's writings. This success, however, was largely one of sentiment, not of pecuniary fortune. The total income from four editions of a poem like Brand, in the conditions of Northern literary life forty years ago, would not much exceed £100.
Johan Paulsen describes as so surprising an element of conversation with Ibsen. To the gossip of that amiable Boswell, too, we must turn for a valuable impression of the solidification of Ibsen's habits which began about this time, and which marked then even before he left Munich. He had now successfully separated himself from all society, and even his family saw him only at meals.
"Or perhaps you didn't go?" she suggested, and he perceived that she meant Ibsen's tragedy. But he did not answer at once. He had had a shock, and for a timeless space he had been back in his room at St. Johnswort, with that weird figure seated at his table.
This sounds very like a return to Rousseau, almost a century after the futility of Rousseau's theories had been made manifest to all. There is no denying, however, that Ibsen's doctrine is most appealing to a dramatist, whose business it is to set on the stage the strivings of the individual.
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