Henrik Ibsen as a poet
by Ketil Jensehaugen
Ideas are what prose expresses, verse,
our visions.
Mind’s delight and mind’s distresses,
grief whose snow my forehead presses,
wrath’s emissions,
I present life’s richness better
for the verse’s fetter.
This is a part of ‘Rhyme-letter to Mrs. Heiberg,’ written in Dresden, Easter-week 1871, one of the last major poems by Henrik Ibsen before he dedicated all his energies to his plays in prose. His only compilation of poetry; Poems (Digte), was published 3rd of May the same year and this was presented here for the fist time. This long poem, written as a letter, a popular form of poetry at the time and dedicated to Mrs. Heiberg; actress, producer and director at the Royal Theater in Copenhagen, was later praised by the Danish critic Georg Brandes as Ibsen’s most artistically successful.
In Autumn, published in 1849 under the pseudonym Brynjulf Bjarme, marked his debut as a lyricist ? before that of the dramatist in 1850 with Catiline. With a few exceptions, the second, enlarged edition of Poems in 1875, in which four new poems were added, signalled the end of Ibsen’s career as a poet thus deciding how his poetry was to be remembered: ‘I have received the copies of my poems. They amount to a thick volume, but up to now I have scrapped three quarters of them, and I am re-working the last quarter.’ On committing himself entirely to stringent prose, he built a burial mound over his poetry. It stands between the epic poems of the 1860’s, Brand and Peer Gynt (with the rhymed play Love’s Comedy) and the new dramatic pillars of realism from the late 1870’s on.
Our guest we followed,
our last, to the gateway;
the night wind swallowed
our partings straightway.
A ten-fold drearness,
the house in its fences,
where sweet-toned nearness
had drowned my senses.
A party, merely,
then darkness bereft us;
a visit, merely ?
and now she has left us.
‘She Has Left Us’ (Borte), written in 1864, plays on one of the major themes of Ibsen’s poetry, that of loneliness. In one of his most personal poems ‘Miner’ (Bergmannen), the symbol of the miner is used by Ibsen to describe his life-long commitment to the solitary work as an artist:
No, still delve I must, not cease;
here lives my eternal peace.
Break my way, you hammer, batter
to the secret heart of matter.
Hammering and hammering
to the last day life shall bring.
Never beam of brightness dawning,
never sun-of- hope’s full morning.
This image of the poet as a miner is so closely linked to Ibsen, that a miner’s hammer adorns the monument over his grave in Oslo.
In another of his strongly personal poems, published in 1860, ‘On the Moors’ (Pa viddene), we meet a man who, in his longing for freedom, chooses the isolation and loneliness of the moors in preference to family-life in the village below.
I’m clad now in steel, I follow full-shod
the high-country summons to wander!
I’ve lived out life on the lowland clod;
up here on the heights there is freedom and God,
the rest are groping down yonder.
The changes of rhythms, the extensive use of the dactylic metre, the stringency in the telling of the story, and the mastery with which the text is dramatized resembles the poetry of Thomas Hardy, as do a lot of his best poems. As in many of Ibsen’s other poems, we find here a philosophical reflection connected to an introductory symbol from nature or daily life.
The narrow track winds up the hill
and bears into the pines;
behind me fjord and valley fill
with haze where moonlight shines.
‘On the Moors,’ in its allegorical, antithetic form, deals with a conflict that was broadly debated at the time about whether an artist should choose between taking part in society or withdraw himself from it. Worth mentioning in this context are the works of Søren Kierkegaard, particularly Either - Or, held by many to be a source of inspiration for Henrik Ibsen.
In his first period as a poet, Ibsen wrote patriotic poems, praising the awakening of Norwegian national pride, supporting the idea of an independent Norway and writing about Norwegian heroes and nationalistic events.
Poems like ‘Akershus’ and ‘King Haakon’s Guildhall’ in four-lined stanzas fit in here with the elaborate epic poem Terje Vigen in nine-lined stanzas more sophisticatedly rhymed. This poem, describing the suffering of a Norwegian father at the mercy of the English, was memorized and declaimed as an act of patriotism by many of Ibsen’s contemporaries.
But even as Ibsen was publishing his Poems, he seems to have given up on nationalistic idealism as a liberating force, turning to individualism. It is the task of the courageous artist to change the minds of people and society in a radical way, and not the politicians with their compromises. In the 1869 poem, ‘To My Friend the Revolutionary Orator,’ Ibsen answers a Swedish radical liberal who had called him a conservative:
Just one revolution is worth repeating
that wasn’t a matter of half-baked cheating.
.............................................
Let’s try it again but be more categorical;
we’ll need real men though, not just
rhetorical.
You fix up a flood to earth’s farthest mark.
I’ll gladly, myself, torpedo the Ark.
This is a long way from love poems like ‘Blue-print,’ from 1858 where we find the following lines. Apart from the declaration of love, we can already here also sense the ambition in the poet of making a difference to the world.
I’ll build the North a beacon. A great
castle in the air.
There’ll be two wing-extensions; one small,
one big affair.
The bigger one to harbor a bard of
deathless power;
the small shall serve a maiden and be her
private bower.
Henrik Ibsen was becoming a beacon, but he had to dig deep into himself to be the bard of deathless power:
To live is to – fight troll-demons
in vaults of the mind and heart.
To write is – that is to summons
self to a doomsday apart.
(‘A Verse,’ 1877)
This was the poet who was about to give the world plays like A Doll’s House (1875), An Enemy of the People (1882) and Rosmersholm (1886).
Ketil Jensehaugen is a Norwegain poet. He has earlier contributed a number of articles on Ibsen to New Age
RELEVANCE AND COMMUNICATION
Staging Ibsen in Bangladesh
by Kamaluddin Nilu
The socio-political issues Henrik Ibsen deals with are still relevant. Ibsen has transcended geographical and socio-cultural barriers and is a timeless voice against the constraints that cultural conceptions and social forces put on individuals. However, the plays have to suit the socio-political conditions and the cultural conceptions of the audience in order to be understood. I will illustrate this point by drawing on the experience Centre for Asian Theatre (CAT) gained in connection with the staging of Ghosts (Gengangere) and The Wild Duck (Vildanden). Whereas Krishnabibar is an adaptation of Ghosts, Bunohans (The Wild Duck) is closer to a translation. It emerges that an adaptation has the potential of being more efficient - to be more relevant – than a translation.
Before entering into a discussion of these two play productions, I would like to draw attention to the limitations of having to work on the basis of English translations rather than the original text, as important meanings might be lost or misunderstood when a play is translated from Norwegian to English. I am giving an example from my own experience when I was working on Peer Gynt. In the scene where Aase is about to die and Peer tries to console her by telling a story, the Norwegian word ‘Svarten’ (literally ‘the black one’) is translated into English as ‘demon’ (meaning of satan) while the reference in the original text is actually to a black horse.
Let us now look into how the titles of the two plays, Ghosts and The Wild Duck, have been translated into Bangla. Taking Ghosts first, this is itself an inaccurate translation of the Norwegian word ‘gengangere’ which literally means ‘the dead who reappear.’ Neither a translation of the Norwegian word ‘gengangere’ nor of the English ‘ghosts’ would be suitable in Bangladesh, partly because there is no concept of reappearance after death in Islam and secondly because ‘ghosts’ only has the meaning of devils.
As a consequence, an alternative title in Bangla had to be found which signifies the main content of the play. The title chosen, ‘Krishnabibar,’ is the key symbol of the play and means ‘black-chamber’ (literally ‘black hole’). Though the literal meaning of this Bangla word is far from the original one, the interpretation of the word makes it significant in relation to the content of the original play. ‘Bunohans,’ on the other hand, is a direct translation of the word ‘Wild Duck’ as this symbol is understood in the same way in Bangladesh as in the West.
The most fundamental difference between Krishnabibar and the original is that Krishnabibar is set in a Muslim society. This implies that the text had to be altered or changed on several points. It is my view though that this has been
done without distorting the message and the main story line of the original.
The two play productions were received differently. A survey undertaken by CAT showed that the audience was very positive to the Krishnabibar production, and that they found the story line relevant and the performance easy to understand. The survey also showed that the audience came from different social classes. It was interesting to note that in the small towns, women made up the majority of the audience which is usually not the case. It seems that Krishnabibar appealed to women because they recognised the problem with the hidden aspects of family life in the Bangladeshi society as well as the oppression in the name of religion. Most newspapers reviews were positive, noting that the play had dealt with important social issues in Bangladesh in an efficient way.
Bunohans was also well received by critics and by a narrow segment of intellectuals, who liked the production both because it is close to Ibsen’s text and because they considered the play as giving a relevant description of certain contemporary social problems. It is my impression that they were positive especially to the presentation of the complexity of the man-woman relationship which is a typical feature in affluent and educated social groups in Bangladesh. This means that the critics and the intellectuals found the production to be relevant.
Bunohans did, however, not appeal to the common audience, and the production was seen by a much smaller number of people than Krishnabibar. In retrospect, there may be three reasons why Bunohans did not appeal to the common audience.
Firstly, the complexity of the play, combined with the fact that it was not adapted, might imply that it was hard for the major part of the audience to understand it properly. In this sense, there was thus a communication problem. Secondly, it might be a problem of relevance in the sense that the living conditions described in the play are very different from their own.
Thirdly, and most important, is that the content of the play was considered to be against the norms and values of the society. With regard to the latter, it is interesting to note that Ibsen during his time experienced similar reactions in connection with some of his socio-political plays.
Concluding, the two examples presented show that it may be a challenging task to stage western plays in societies with different socio-political conditions and different cultural conceptions and values.
It has emerged that both plays were considered highly relevant by the critics and intellectuals. This is also my view. Despite this, it was found that the common audience received the adaptation of Ghosts (Krishnabibar) in a positive way whereas the translation of The Wild Duck (Bunohans) did not appeal to them.
In my view, this shows that for certain types of plays, it is of vital importance to adapt them in order to ensure that they are in line with the cultural conceptions and the ways of thinking of the audience. Thus, relevance is not enough to achieve success. Communication with the audience is equally important.
Kamaluddin Nilu is Artistic Director Centre for Asian Theatre (CAT). Apart from Ghosts and The Wild Duck, he has also translated and staged A Doll’s House. He is Convenor of the Ibsen centennial observances in Bangladesh
University of Dhaka to hold Ibsen Conference
Literary correspondent
As part of the Ibsen Commemoration in Bangladesh, the Department of English, University of Dhaka, is organising a two-day Ibsen Conference on 13 and 14 May. The conference will follow on the International Ibsen Conference and Theatre Festival scheduled to take place in Dhaka from 10-12 May 2006. Different aspects of Ibsen, including his relevance to the contemporary world, will be the focus of discussion. Apart from academics, scholars and theatre practitioners from Bangladesh, a number of foreign scholars are also expected to participate.
Syed Manzoorul Islam to receive Prothom Alo Award
Literary Correspondent
Syed Manzoorul Islam, professor of English at the University of Dhaka, renowned literary and art critic, and short story writer will be receiving the Prothom Alo Award
for creative writing on January 28. Two other winners of the Prothom Alo award are Jatin Sarkar and Haidar Akbar Khan Rono.
Professor Islam has won the award for his story collection Prem O Prarthanar Galpa while both Jatin Sarkar and Haidar Akbar Khan Rono received theirs for autobiographies. Jatin Sarkar’s Pakistaner Janma-mrityu Darshan was published by Sahityika while Haidar Akbar Khan Rono’s Shatabdi Periye was published by Tarafdar Prakashani. Anyaprakash is the publisher of Islam’s Prem O Prarthanar Galpa.
A five-member jury, comprising of writers and researchers, selected the winners who will receive Taka 50 thousand as prize money, a crest and a certificate.
Prothom Alo instituted these awards last year, with Shaheen Akhtar winning the creative writing award for Talash.
Poems
by Henrik Ibsen
Praise Be to Woman
‘Priset vaere kvinnen!’ was written for a song festival and first published in 1859. The previous year Ibsen was married to Suzannah Thoresen.
With summer in soul fared we forth through
the sound and fjord;
billowing song swept our spirit abroad.
In leaf-burst on the hill,
in bird-call song and trill,
we found the same yearning as ours in the
day,—
a longing for light that’s defiant yet gay.
A singer’s young soul’s like the birch in a
sun-
warmed spring;
sap through the veins goes leavening;
mature at last it weaves
the twigs a crown of leaves;
see, there’s his abundance, a song-burst of
bloom:
that longing for light is life’s mystery-doom.
But here in the lure of the light-land, here
woman dwells;
woman the cause why the song-seedling
swells.
Anew, when fully grown,
songs woo her for their own.
Praise be to woman where song-billows ring;
the fairest of day-gleams in singer’s bright
spring!
======================
Thanks
Ibsen wrote ‘Takk’ in Rome in 1871 while preparing Poems. Ibsen’s wife was a formidable woman. In a letter to Peter Hansen in 1879, Ibsen described her as ‘a woman of great character. . . illogical but with a strong, poetic instinct, a broad and liberal mind, and an almost violent hatred of all pettiness.’ The poem reflects this, but also the lighter side of their relationship. Ibsen nicknamed her his cat, and drew bank-notes for considerable sums of love as gifts, some adorned with a cat. The Norwegian Tak (k) is, as John Northam points out, Kat in reverse.
Her distress was the sorrow
that roughened my way,—
her delight was the morrow
when joy swept my day.
Her abode and her dwelling
is freedom’s broad main,
with poet-sails swelling
reflected again.
Her own stock, the creations
that stride in array,
brave-pennanted nations
thronging my lay.
Her ambition, inspiring
my soul to glow,
but always requiring
no others should know.
Because she expected
no thanks as pay,
in print I’ve elected
my ‘thanks’ to say.
From Ibsen’s Poems translated and with an Introduction by John Northam, Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1986
We thank Ketil Jensehaugen for lending us his copy of the book.
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