by Henrik Ibsen
10. Henrik Ibsen to Frederik V. Hegel, 12 July 1871, http://www.ibsen.uio.no/brev.xhtml.
11. Henrik Ibsen to Edmund Gosse, 15 January 1874, http://www.ibsen.uio.no/brev.xhtml.
12. ‘Literatur. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson: “En Fallit” og “Redaktøren” ’, Det nittende Aarhundrede (1875), p. 241.
13. Henrik Ibsen to Lucie Wolf, 25 May 1883, http://www.ibsen.uio.no/brev.xhtml.
14. Moretti, The Bourgeois, p. 169.
15. It should be noted, however, that Ibsen’s success in Germany was more tentatively connected with his name at this stage; it was primarily a matter of traditional theatre conventions and star actresses. See Ståle Dingstad, Den smilende Ibsen (Oslo: Akademika Forlag, 2013), pp. 167–80.
16. The Sunday Times, 21 July 1889, p. 7, quoted in Egan, ed., Henrik Ibsen, p. 3.
17. Inga-Stina Ewbank, ‘Ibsen’s Language: Literary Text and Theatrical Context’, in The Yearbook of English Studies (Birmingham: MHRA, 1979), pp. 102–15 (p. 115).
18. Cf. Bjørn Hemmer, ‘Ibsen and the Realistic Problem Drama’, in James McFarlane, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Ibsen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 68–88 (pp. 77–8).
19. See Toril Moi, Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism: Art, Theater, Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 221, and Hemmer, ‘Ibsen and the Realistic Problem Drama’, p. 77.
20. Henrik Ibsens Skrifter (HIS), vol. 7k, p. 191 (digital edition: www.ibsen.uio.no).
21. See James W. McFarlane, ed. and trans., The Oxford Ibsen, 8 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), vol. 5, pp. 436–7.
22. For a short version of this story in English, see e.g. Joan Templeton, Ibsen’s Women (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 135–7.
23. Julie Holledge, ‘Addressing the Global Phenomenon of A Doll’s House: An Intercultural Intervention’, Ibsen Studies 8, no. 1 (2008), pp. 13–28.
24. Henrik Ibsen to Frederik V. Hegel, 2 September 1879. http://www.ibsen.uio.no/brev.xhtml.
25. HIS, vol. 7k, p. 210.
26. See Moi, Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism, pp. 236–42.
27. Clement Scott, ‘A Doll’s House’, Theatre (July 1889), xiv, pp. 19–22, in Egan, ed., Henrik Ibsen, p. 114; Edith Lees Ellis, Stories and Essays (Berkeley Heights: Free Spirit Press, 1924), p. 128.
28. Moi, Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism, p. 226.
29. Ibid., pp. 244 and 247; for another discussion of the tensions between ‘universalist’ and ‘feminist’ readings, see Templeton, Ibsen’s Women, pp. 110–45.
30. Moi, Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism, p. 247.
31. Templeton, Ibsen’s Women, p. 137.
32. Julie Holledge, ‘Pastor Hansen’s Confirmation Class: Religion, Freedom, and the Female Body in Et Dukkehjem’, Ibsen Studies 10, no. 1 (2010), pp. 3–16 (p. 3).
33. For a longer discussion of the uses of this word, see Brian Johnston, ed., ‘Introduction’, in Ibsen’s Selected Plays, pp. xi–xxi (p. xix). But Johnston’s edition has chosen to translate ‘det vidunderlige’ with ‘wonderful’.
34. Henry Arthur Jones and Henry Herman, Breaking a Butterfly: A Play in Three Acts, LCC 53271, British Library.
35. Scott, unsigned notice, Daily Telegraph, 8 June 1889, p. 3, in Egan, ed., Henrik Ibsen, pp. 101–3 (p. 101).
36. Cf. Michael Egan, ‘Introduction’, in Egan, ed., Henrik Ibsen, pp. 1–39 (p. 5).
37. Bernard Shaw, ‘The Quintessence of Ibsenism’, in Major Critical Essays (London: Penguin, 1986), pp. 23–176 (pp. 160–64).
38. Ibid., pp. 163–4.
39. Cf. Peter Szondi, ‘Ibsen’, in Charles R. Lyons, ed., Critical Essays on Henrik Ibsen (Boston, Mass.: G. K. Hall, 1987), pp. 106–11 (pp. 110–11).
40. See Paul Binding’s assessment of Osvald the artist, With Vine-Leaves in His Hair (Norwich: Norvik Press, 2006), pp. 21–46.
41. Ewbank, ‘Ibsen’s Language: Literary Text and Theatrical Context’, pp. 107–8.
42. Henrik Ibsen to Frederik V. Hegel, 23 November 1881, http://www.ibsen.uio.no/brev.xhtml.
43. Henrik Ibsen to Sophus Schandorph, 6 January 1882, http://www.ibsen.uio.no/brev.xhtml.
44. Nicholas de Jongh, Politics, Prudery and Perversions (London: Methuen, 2000), p. 29. See also theatre historian Jean Chothia’s account, English Drama of the Early Modern Period, 1890–1940 (London: Longman, 1996).
45. Editorial comment in the Daily Telegraph, 14 March 1891, p. 5, in Egan, ed., Henrik Ibsen, pp. 189–93 (p. 190).
46. William Archer, ‘Ghosts and Gibberings’, Pall Mall Gazette, 8 April 1891, in Egan, ed., Henrik Ibsen, pp. 209–14.
47. Cf. Tore Rem, ‘Afterword to Ghosts’, in Said about Ibsen – By Norwegian Writers, trans. Robert Ferguson (Oslo: Gyldendal, 2006), pp. 34–40 (p. 34); Moi, Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism, pp. 96–100.
48. Henrik Ibsen to Frederik V. Hegel, 16 March 1882. http://www.ibsen.uio.no/brev.xhtml.
49. Unsigned notice, The Times, 15 June 1893, in Egan, ed., Henrik Ibsen, pp. 298–9 (p. 298).
50. James Joyce, ‘Ibsen’s New Drama’, in Lyons, ed., Critical Essays, pp. 37–53 (p. 52).
51. Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994), p. 355. See Tore Rem, ‘ “The Provincial of Provincials”: Ibsen’s Strangeness and the Process of Canonisation’, Ibsen Studies 4, no. 2 (2004), pp. 205–26.
52. Hans-Robert Jauss, ‘The Identity of the Poetic Text in the Changing Horizon of Understanding’, in James L. Machor and Philip Goldstein (eds.), Reception Study (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 7–28 (p. 25).
53. Georg Lukács, ‘Tolstoy and the Development of Realism’, in Lyons, ed., Critical Essays, pp. 99–105 (p. 102).
54. Damrosch, What Is World Literature?, p. 283.
55. Derek Attridge, J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), p. 11.
56. A somewhat freer translation has ‘I’d rather ask; my job’s not explanations’; cf. ‘A Rhyme-Letter’, in Ibsen’s Poems, trans. John Northam (Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1986), pp. 125–9 (p. 126).
Further Reading
Book Studies and Articles in English
Aarseth, Asbjørn, Peer Gynt and Ghosts (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989).
Anderman, Gunilla, Europe on Stage: Translation and Theatre (London: Oberon, 2005).
Binding, Paul, With Vine-Leaves in His Hair: The Role of the Artist in Ibsen’s Plays (Norwich: Norvik Press, 2006).
Bloom, Harold, ed., Henrik Ibsen, Modern Critical Views (Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1999).
Bryan, George B., An Ibsen Companion (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984).
Durbach, Errol, ed., Ibsen and the Theatre (London: Macmillan, 1980).
––– ‘Ibsen the Romantic’: Analogues of Paradise in the Later Plays (London: Macmillan, 1982).
Egan, Michael, ed., Henrik Ibsen: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge, 1997 [1972]).
Ewbank, Inga-Stina et al., eds., Anglo-Scandinavian Cross-Currents (Norwich: Norvik Press, 1999).
Fischer-Lichte, Erika et al., eds., Global Ibsen: Performing Multiple Modernities (London: Routledge, 2011).
Fulsås, Narve, ‘Ibsen Misrepresented: Canonization, Oblivion, and the Need for History’, Ibsen Studies 11, no. 1 (2011).
Goldman, Michael, Ibsen: The Dramaturgy of Fear (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).
Helland, Frode, ‘Empire and Culture in Ibsen: Some Notes on the Dangers and Ambiguities of Interculturalism’, Ibsen Studies 9, no. 2 (2009).
Holledge, Julie, ‘Addressing the Global Phenomenon of A Doll’s House: An Intercultural Intervention’, Ibsen Studies 8, no. 1 (2008).
Innes, Christopher, ed., Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler: A Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 2003).
Johnston, Brian, The Ibsen Cycle (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania University Press, 199
2).
Kittang, Atle, ‘Ibsen, Heroism, and the Uncanny’, Modern Drama 49, no. 3 (2006).
Ledger, Sally, Henrik Ibsen, Writers and Their Work (Tavistock: Northcote House, 2008 [1999]).
Lyons, Charles R., ed., Critical Essays on Henrik Ibsen (Boston, Mass.: G. K. Hall, 1987).
––– Henrik Ibsen: The Divided Consciousness (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1972).
McFarlane, James, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Ibsen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
––– Ibsen and Meaning: Studies, Essays and Prefaces 1953–87 (Norwich: Norvik Press, 1989).
Malone, Irina Ruppo, Ibsen and the Irish Revival (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2010).
Meyer, Michael, Henrik Ibsen (abridged edition) (London: Cardinal, 1992 [1971]).
Moi, Toril, Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism: Art, Theater, Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Moretti, Franco, The Bourgeois: Between History and Literature (London: Verso, 2013).
Northam, John, Ibsen’s Dramatic Method: A Study of the Prose Dramas (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1971 [1953]).
Puchner, Martin, ‘Goethe, Marx, Ibsen and the Creation of a World Literature’, Ibsen Studies 13, no. 1 (2013).
Rem, Tore, ‘ “The Provincial of Provincials”: Ibsen’s Strangeness and the Process of Canonisation’, Ibsen Studies 4, no. 2 (2004).
Sandberg, Mark B., Ibsen’s Houses: Architectural Metaphor and the Modern Uncanny (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
Shepherd-Barr, Kirsten, Ibsen and Early Modernist Theatre, 1890–1900 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997).
Templeton, Joan, Ibsen’s Women (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
Törnqvist, Egil, Ibsen: A Doll’s House (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
Williams, Raymond, Drama from Ibsen to Brecht (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974).
Digital and Other Resources
Ibsen.nb.no is a website with much useful information on Ibsen and on Ibsen productions worldwide: http://ibsen.nb.no/id/83.0.
Henrik Ibsens Skrifter is the new critical edition of Ibsen’s complete works. So far only available in Norwegian: http://www.ibsen.uio.no/forside.xhtml.
Ibsen Studies is the leading Ibsen journal.
A Note on the Translation
Henrik Ibsen’s reputation as one of the world’s greatest playwrights is today, well over a hundred years after his death, firmly established. His international popularity naturally owes much to the translation of his work into a large number of languages over the years, and several versions of most of his plays already exist in English. When being translated again, for these Penguin editions, Ibsen no longer needs to be ‘introduced’ or ‘rediscovered’ – as was the case a hundred years ago or during the 1960s and ’70s – and this has given us the confidence to delve deeper into the texture of his writing, safe in the knowledge that Ibsen’s brilliance in turning social, political and psychological subject matters into compelling theatre is beyond dispute. Looking closely at the plays, it soon became apparent to us that Ibsen’s theatrical genius is found not only at the structural level but with equal precision at the micro-level of his texts. We discovered that the preservation of even seemingly insignificant linguistic details might enhance the reader’s interpretation of a character or scene. In particular we became alert to the theatrical significance of the repetition of words and phrases within Ibsen’s texts, and to the imagery used by his characters that is both explicitly and subtly embedded in everyday language. Attention to linguistic accuracy also allowed for some of the more idiosyncratic aspects of Ibsen’s characters to emerge more clearly. During our work we have consulted electronic versions of all Ibsen’s plays, comparing them to the works of other Norwegian writers at the time, fiction as well as non-fiction, in addition to a five-volume contemporary encyclopaedia. Doing so made it possible for us to quantify phrase and word frequency within and between Ibsen’s plays, and with greater accuracy to identify instances when Ibsen was being creative with the verbal conventions of his time. Our aim has been the recreation of dialogue that preserves the plays’ dramatic ‘performability’, while paying closer attention to the linguistic fabric of Ibsen’s original than has been ventured in previous translations. We have selected here a few representative examples to illustrate our approach.
One example pertaining to linguistic fidelity is to be found in Ghosts, where Pastor Manders in Act One suggests that children are best brought up in ‘fædrenehjemmet’, literally the patriarchal home. The temptation for a translator is to use the colloquial family home. Ibsen could, however, easily have used this term in Norwegian, and here in fact gender is important: far from being the morally upright patriarch to whom Osvald should look up, his father is revealed as a wastrel. Indeed, it was precisely to avoid the potential infection of the patriarchal home that Mrs Alving sent Osvald away to school.
Previous translations of Pastor Manders’ lines have preserved his eloquence and self-importance but overlooked the linguistically violent aspect of some of them. In the same act, Manders recounts with pride how he once made Mrs Alving submit to her moral duty and return to her husband, employing a turn of phrase that in Norwegian is very brutal. He uses the words ‘jeg fik Dem bøjet ind under pligt og lydighed’, which literally translates as I got you bent in under duty and obedience. It is significant that this is not the most obvious choice to describe submission in Norwegian. Whether this reflects an earlier passion or an aggressive aspect of Pastor Manders’ character is open to interpretation, but the challenge it gives the translator in producing convincing dialogue makes it all too tempting to tone down.
All of Ibsen’s characters have distinct voices that in previous translations often have been normalized: Hilmar Tønnesen’s ineffectual bravado, Dr Rank’s dark humour, the childish eagerness of Mr Billing’s revolutionary interjections, Nora’s effusive language, the impulsive and belligerent tone of Dr Stockmann, the mysterious and spiteful voice of Old Morten Kiil, the outspokenness of Miss Hessel, the malapropisms of Mr Engstrand and Regine. All of these are dependent on the translator giving close attention not only to the rhythm, register and speech patterns, but also each character’s idiosyncratic use of vocabulary and imagery.
Mr Rummel, in Pillars of the Community, is in many translations made to speak in quite everyday terms, yet in Norwegian he talks with a distinctly brusque and rumbustious tone. In Act Four Mr Rummel tries to convince a jittery Consul Bernick that their opponents must be suppressed by an overwhelming display of confidence. He uses words associated with weight, such as heavy, crush, swell and ample, to create a graphic image of manipulation of the townsfolk. Beyond its semi-political resonance, there may also be a comic dimension to this speech: Rummel not only speaks loudly (as his wife tells us), but is possibly an overweight character – his name in Norwegian suggests hollow noise and rotundity. It would at any rate be remiss of us to ignore the associations with weight in the words Ibsen has chosen for him.
By contrast Mr Krap, in the same play, speaks with absolute directness, regularly omitting the grammatical subject in his speech. This not only serves to create a specific idiolect, but brings pace to the opening scene of the play and strengthens the tension between the modern, efficient bureaucrat (Mr Krap) and the older, working-class shipbuilder (Aune), a tension that is central to the play, in which the new industrial world is replacing the old order. It also undoubtedly reflects Ibsen’s determination to bring to the stage Norwegian as it was really spoken.
An aspect of Ibsen’s writing that has affected much of our translation work is his use of repeated words and phrases. It is generally recognized that there are a number of key words that correspond to key themes in Ibsen’s plays, but Ibsen goes much further. Certain words may only ever be used by one character, or may be shared by two, or used in one play by several characters. Repetition is a powerful tool in the theatre: while an audience may not consciously notice t
he repetition of a word or phrase, it will nonetheless resonate subliminally. By limiting his vocabulary Ibsen creates a palette for each play, and thereby a unique, self-contained linguistic world carefully woven into the everyday language of its inhabitants.
This is particularly true of A Doll’s House, in which there are several notable repeats. Among these are Nora’s favourite word ‘dejligt’ (lovely), which is used by or about her twenty-four times, Helmer’s ‘lille’ (little), employed twenty-seven times only to describe Nora, and the crucial ‘vidunderlig’ (wonderful/miraculous), which stands in contrast to ‘forfærdelig’ (dreadful/disastrous), appearing nineteen and fourteen times respectively throughout the play. Nora also views life or emotional experiences as either ‘let’ (light/easy) or ‘tungt’ (heavy/difficult), sometimes with only a few lines between them. Other repeats, and another contrasting pair, are that of ‘smukt’ (beautiful) and ‘stygt’ (ugly). The first is used twelve times in describing Nora’s dress and appearance, the house and Christmas decorations, etc. The second is used sixteen times in a variety of expressions including for unpleasant talk, bad weather, bad teeth, ugly words or foul newspapers – all things that threaten the perfection of the home or even Helmer’s love for Nora. Finally, the word ‘udvej’ (a way out) appears in this play nine times, used only occasionally in a few of Ibsen’s other plays. The word is spoken by Nora (seven times) or someone talking to her (twice). Nora says she is looking for an ‘udvej’ to get money, literally a way out to get money. Ibsen could easily have used the word ‘måde’ (method/means) or ‘kilde’ (source) but chooses to make Nora say ‘udvej’, reflecting her sense of being trapped. The challenge for the translator is that each manifestation of these words in Ibsen’s Norwegian does not consistently correspond to the same word in English. This is not normally a problem in translation, unless the very act of repeating is significant – which we believe it is. Reluctantly we have occasionally had to settle for minimal variation, instead of a complete match, when no other solution was acceptable.