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Ibsen and Norway
Norwegian poet and writer Ketil Jensehaugen describes the political and cultural situation in nineteenth-century Norway and explores Ibsen’s ambivalent relationship with the land of his birth

In 1814, as Denmark lost its 400-year domination over Norway, the Norwegians created their own constitution, one of the most modern and liberal in the world at the time, modelled on the French and American. The following century, it had to be defended as Norway was forced into a union with Sweden that on occasions tried to limit or change the constitution according to its needs. This made the population more conscious of their rights, above all, the freedom of speech. It was the free, often small, farmers that were the backbone in this new, if dependent state. The political power was potentially theirs to be taken. However, the old class of big landowners, merchants and civil servants stood in their way. From around the 1860’s, almost simultaneously, the fight for power among various groups within the country and the movement against the union was started and intensified. In these years the country also lived through a period of lasting economical crisis and structural changes.
   At the same time, due to a rapid growth of a population with limited access to recourses and with small possibilities to better their position in a rigid social and economical system, Norway witnessed an enormous and unprecedented migration of its people. People moved from the countryside to the cities and above all to other countries, mainly America. Between 1850 and 1915, approximately 750,000 people left the country. New classes were emerging; new groups of people were liberated from century-old bonds in the countryside. The cities were growing rapidly, Christiania (now Oslo) increased with 20,000 inhabitants in the years between 1865 and 1875, a growth of more than 35%. The new, self-conscious middle-class was asserting itself with vigour, both against the old regime of economical and political power as well as the emerging working class in the cities. A new, more modern Norway was taking shape.
   It is in this context that one must see the work of Henrik Ibsen. In particular the so-called realistic as well as psychological and symbolic dramas starting in 1877 (Pillars of Society) and ending with his last play When We Dead Awaken (1899). But also, the earlier ones, like Brand (1866), Peer Gynt (1867) and The League of Youth (1869) relate to changing realities in a Norway in transition from being one of the poorest countries at the outskirts of Europe. It was winning its freedom and gaining control over the country’s rich resources and for a while it was to be culturally at the forefront internationally. Many of the old elite lost their political and economic hegemony: some went bankrupt, others married into the emerging new middle-class. New businesses and fortunes were created, communications were opened up. Money and high positions in the society became the new denominators. It is easy to see characters like Hedda Gabler, Johannes Rosmer (Rosmersholm) and Mrs. Alving (Ghosts) as representatives of the old order, either trying to change with the times or losing out. Helmer (A Doll’s House) is desperate to hold on to his newly won position as a bank-manager. Solness (The Masterbuilder) has become rich and famous by building houses for the emerging bourgeoisie, whereas John Gabriel Borkmann, in his drive to become an industrial magnate, is crushed because he regards himself above the law. In An Enemy of the People, we meet a local business community that will stop at nothing to get wealthy, risking the health of others — similar to Pillars of Society. Wild Duck (1884) is a play in which all the strata of contemporary Norway interact. It would still take some time before all men had the right to vote (1896), and even longer before the Noras of Norway could have their political say via the ballot box (1913).
   However, it does not do justice to the dramatic artistry of Ibsen only to look for historical facts and living models in his plays. To quote the critic Brian Johnson: ‘It is obvious that in the Realist Cycle, as in Brand and Peer Gynt, Ibsen did not imitate his Norway, he invented it — as an adequately metaphoric space for his tragic vision.’ As a Norwegian I recognise Norway in the landscapes, the indoors and the way the characters think and speak. It is a realistic background, but I also realise that his dramas are universal also in the sense that they are easily transferable both geographically and historically. Another critic, Jan Kott, springs to my mind: ‘Into the houses of Ibsen’s imagination descend the ghosts of Oedipus, Electra, Orestes and Iphigenia.. .’ In other words his characters represent something more than persons from everyday Norwegian life. ‘They are carrying a cargo of archetypal identity under their modern appearance’ to borrow the words of Brian Johnson. But then again, knowing his characters represent entire humanity, we, his countrymen are proud when recognising ourselves in their language and imagery. It is strange to think that Henrik Ibsen did not want to be part of our country living through times of dramatic changes. Sadly enough, most of the time, he felt compelled to stay away. It was as if he needed the distance in order to see and describe the people and its conflicts in his native land. We all know that by studying an object too close up, it might get blurred and confusing.
   At the same time, in a small country like Norway, revealing or satirically portraying his contemporaries, was a great risk to him. The scandal he created by publishing and staging Ghosts (1881) is a good illustration of this. Apparently Norway was not yet able to love and admire him in the way he wanted. He probably saw no reason to return since the rest of Europe, first of all Germany, had started to recognise him as the greatest playwright of the time. Pillars of Society, the play that first brought him international fame, was staged at five theatres in Berlin simultaneously. Many critics have seen the play An Enemy of the People (1883) as an answer to the condemnations poured over him after Ghosts. One might easily read his feeling of being misunderstood and treated unfairly into the persona of Dr. Stockmann. ‘In Norway, writers are regarded as vermin and treated accordingly’ were his own words describing his relationship with his country. ‘I shall not return until Norway calls me,’ he once wrote. It actually never did, nevertheless, he returned in 1891 after 27 years of self-imposed exile.
   In the beginning of his time in Italy, it is said that he kept a live scorpion in an empty beer glass on his desk to remind him of Norway, his hostile home country. He seems to have imagined himself as some sort of Socrates in exile. And he had lived through a tough patch in his own country. His first play Catiline (l850), published under the name of Brynjolf Barme, inspired by the February revolution in Paris, was no success, and most of the copies of the printed play had to be sold as wrapping paper. It was only staged 31 years later.
   In 1851 Henrik Ibsen was appointed to the Norske (Norwegian) Theater in Bergen as a dramatic author until he in 1857 was employed as Artistic Director at the Kristiania Norske Theater in present-day Oslo. In 1863 as this theatre went bankrupt, he moved on to become an adviser at Christiania Theater. In a letter to Bjørnson in 1867, he described his years working in the theatre with the following words: ‘For a literary writer the struggle in the theatre is a daily repetition of an induced abortion.’ To him the work in the various theatres of the provincial Norway in the mid-19th century stood in the way of his development as a playwright and he was eager to get in touch with a more modern way of creating and staging dramas. During a study tour to Copenhagen and Dresden in 1852, he had happened to find and eagerly study a work on modern dramaturgic theory written by Hermann Hettner, a professor in art and literature at the University of Jena. In Das Moderne Drama, Hettner claims that historical plays, in vogue at the time, should be made to be psychologically relevant for a contemporary audience. They should deal with conflicts of the mind and describe developments in the personality of the main characters. At the same time Ibsen was exposed to the works of William Shakespeare, both as successfully translated texts as well as staged and performed by people of a higher professional theatrical standard than in Norway. He must have felt an urge to transform these ideas and impulses into the drama of the modern world in the making.
   Ibsen needed to be liberated from the tedious production of plays that did not meet his ambitions and receive the acclaim he felt he deserved. In order to describe this world of the new middle-class, he had to leave his home. But he was not alone in this; most of the Scandinavian intelligentsia left for shorter or longer period. When ordinary people emigrated to America due to lack of economic and social opportunities, artists and intellectuals travelled the world in search of new impulses to be found mainly in the new states of Italy and Germany. Their process of unification, both politically and culturally, was attracting a lot of interest from Norwegians in the middle of a similar development.
   In Ibsen’s case it was also a question of economics; at the time he was given a travel grant in 1864, Italy was a cheap country to live in. And he was really poor when he left with his small family of three — his wife Suzannah Thoresen and their son Sigurd, who married the daughter of Bjornson.and became one of Norway’s most acclaimed diplomats.
   Before Ibsen left Norway, he probably feared to perish like Brand, the character he later created, if he continued to stay, struggling for his visions in his small and narrow-minded country. And like another persona of his, Peer Gynt, he was choosing exile instead of fighting the trolls of tradition. Not to hide from himself and his destiny, but to find his true self and create a drama describing the destiny of modern man.
   Ibsen had to leave his home to be able to meticulously carve out a drama flexible enough to describe and fascinate a vast strata of the whole world. It is a mark of his genius that his plays are still seen today to be as modern and relevant for a vast number of people in the time of globalization, when the home and the world are closer to each other than ever before with new challenges to be met. Almost one hundred years after his death, Ibsen’s work is still living, still full of significance, still putting problems under debate.

The parallel action lines of the play give scope for a more optimistic interpretation of the husband-wife relationship than commonly held. Firstly, in addition to the main action line describing the development in the relationship between Torvald Helmer and Nora and ending with Nora leaving home for self-reflection and self-realisation in the real world, there is also another action line in the play dealing with the development of a man-woman relationship between Nils Krogstad and Kristine Linde. In contrast to the relationship between Torvald Helmer and Nora, which moves from union to separation, the relationship between Nils Krogstad and Kristine Linde develops in the opposite direction, that is, from a broken relationship to reunion. Secondly, Nora, in her dialogue with Torvald at the end of the third act, rather than oppose marriage as such, emphasizes on how far their relationship comes short of an ideal marriage.
   Ibsen’s description of the Helmer-Nora relationship is strongly applicable to the usual husband-wife relationship in Bangladesh. Just as Nora was given like property from her father’s hands to Helmer’s, Bangladeshi women are also given away in marriage; the marriage relationship is characterised by inequality and lack of mutual openness and trust, and wives mainly act as puppets without any individual identity.
   The main action line in A Doll’s House ending with Nora leaving the home and slamming the door behind her, clearly does not give hope for the marriage between Torvald and Nora. Nora’s slamming of the door behind her is, under the prevailing social circumstances, obviously an expression of revolutionary behaviour, and the sound of the slamming door can be interpreted as an echo, a first sign of new ideas and values that are emerging.
   However, this does not necessarily mean that Ibsen wanted to attack the marriage institution as such. My understanding of A Doll’s House is rather that Ibsen advocates a revolution of the human spirit, which is required to change the marriage institution and to create a marriage relationship in which both husband and wife have individual identities, and which is based on equality, mutual openness and trust. My interpretation is motivated by two main factors: firstly, the importance in the play of the development of the relationship between Nils Krogstad and Kristine Linde, and secondly, Nora’s statement in her dialogue with Torvald at the end of the third act which deals with how their relationship has fallen short of a real marriage: ‘As I am now, I am no wife to you.’
   However, Ibsen’s play does not give a definite answer to whether Nora will come back. My intention with the CAT production was rather to raise questions, which are left to the audience to answer, thereby also encouraging the audience to think about man-woman relationship in their own real world. As Ibsen noted, truth and freedom reside in the individual, implying that society can only change if its individual members change their values, attitudes and behaviour. For the purpose of this ‘ revolution of the human spirit,’ women are the protagonists in many of Ibsen’s plays. This is above all the case with A Doll’s House where Nora and Kristine represent different ideal women characters with values and attitudes that are necessary to change society for the better.
   Putuler Itikatha is a translation of A Doll’s House, the title Putuler Itikatha meaning story of a doll. I wanted to make the play more generalised in terms of our society where men, due to the patriarchal characteristic of society, still oppress women, where women, like Nora, suffer in every aspect of their life; they are human beings without a voice.
   Black and white dominated in my production. The use of black and white was not merely an expression of the non-realistic character of the production, but also served to underline the many important conflicts and contrast in the play: the norms and values of society (as expressed through Helmer) in contrast to the individual quest for freedom (represented by Nora), the opposing women characters as represented by Kristine Linde and Nora, the unequalness in the Nora-Helmer relationship, the contrast between the Nora-Helmer relationship and the Linde-Krogstad relationship as well as fundamental dichotomies such as free/unfree, truth/lie, open/ hidden, human being/ puppet.
   I wanted to show that Nora leaves empty handed and this is done with the intention of underlining that it is an open question whether Nora will return or not. The scene where the children of Torvald and Nora appear was omitted. This was done because their appearance on stage might have caused a negative emotional reaction among the Bangladeshi audience when Nora left, thereby drawing the attention of the audience away from the major issue of the play, notably the man-woman relationship.
   The CAT production ended with Helmer imagining that Nora is no longer confined to four walls, but singing under the open sky.

Zubaan organized a book launch of Syed Waliullah’s Tree Without Roots, the English translation of Syed Waliullah’s classic Bengali novel, Lal Shalu, at its premises in Hauz Khas, Delhi, on 12th September.
   Urvashi Butalia of Zubaan welcomed the audience to the first book launch that it had organized of a book published in Bangladesh. Speaking on the occasion, Niaz Zaman explained that writers.ink had commenced publication with Tree Without Roots because of the importance of the book. Not only does it provide a picture of rural Bengal in the early forties, it also provides an insight into the psyche of Muslim Bengal today. She further noted that though Indian books were visible in Bangladesh, Bangladeshi publications did not cross the border. She hoped that with this book launch, more Bangladeshi publications would make it to book stores in India.
   Dr Shobhana Bhattacharji, while reviewing the book, noted the lucidity of Syed Waliullah’s language as well as his narrative quality. ‘Syed Waliullah does not tell the reader,’ she said, ‘instead, he does what a good novelist should do: he shows the reader.’ Dr Radha Chakravarty also commented on the swift-flowing nature of Syed Walullah’s narrative and pointed out that the book was not about fundamentalism.
   Among others present on the occasion were Jaya Bhattacharji, Dr Rani Ray, and Margaret McDonell.

1. Da Vinci Code (Bangla) translated by Mohammed Nazimuddin
   2. The Eye of the Prophet by Khalil Gibran
   3. Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
   4. Rachana Shamagra (The Collected Writings; vols.1,2,3) by Aroj Ali Matubbar
   5. People’s Politics and Religion: Communalism in Bangladesh and India by Sultana Nahar
   6. A Princely Impostor by Partha Chatterjee
   7. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
   8. Bishesh Joner Bishesh Shakhhatkar compiled by Robaet Ferdous and Firoz Zaman Choudhury
   9. Natun Diganta Shamagra (vols. 1,2,3) by Abdur Rouf Choudhury
   10. Magical Beginnings, Enchanted Life by Deepak Chopra

To celebrate two years of New Age Literature, NAL invites all who have contributed to the page in the form of articles, essays, stories, poems, reviews, translations, to an open-house on October 1 from 4:00- 6:00 p.m. at the New Age premises, 30 Tejgaon Industrial Area.

There are only three weeks for the Rivers Literary Contest to close. If you haven’t sent in your poems and short stories in English or in English translation, do hurry up. To be considered for the competition, entries must be received by October 15, 2005. Results will be announced by the end of October.There will be three prizes in each category. Prize-winning entries will be published in New Age Literature.