Ghosts | Page 2

to make me responsible for the opinions which certain
of the personages of my drama express. And yet there is not in the

whole book a single opinion, a single utterance, which can be laid to
the account of the author. I took good care to avoid this. The very
method, the order of technique which imposes its form upon the play,
forbids the author to appear in the speeches of his characters. My object
was to make the reader feel that he was going through a piece of real
experience; and nothing could more effectually prevent such an
impression than the intrusion of the author's private opinions into the
dialogue. Do they imagine at home that I am so inexpert in the theory
of drama as not to know this? Of course I know it, and act accordingly.
In no other play that I have written is the author so external to the
action, so entirely absent from it, as in this last one."
"They say," he continued, "that the book preaches Nihilism. Not at all.
It is not concerned to preach anything whatsoever. It merely points to
the ferment of Nihilism going on under the surface, at home as
elsewhere. A Pastor Manders will always goad one or other Mrs.
Alving to revolt. And just because she is a woman, she will, when once
she has begun, go to the utmost extremes."
Towards the end of January Ibsen wrote from Rome to Olaf Skavlan:
"These last weeks have brought me a wealth of experiences, lessons,
and discoveries. I, of course, foresaw that my new play would call forth
a howl from the camp of the stagnationists; and for; this I care no more
than for the barking of a pack of chained dogs. But the pusillanimity
which I have observed among the so-called Liberals has given me
cause for reflection. The very day after my play was published the
Dagblad rushed out a hurriedly-written article, evidently designed to
purge itself of all suspicion of complicity in my work. This was entirely
unnecessary. I myself am responsible for what I write, I and no one else.
I cannot possibly embarrass any party, for to no party do I belong. I
stand like a solitary franc-tireur at the outposts, and fight for my own
hand. The only man in Norway who has stood up freely, frankly, and
courageously for me is Björnson. It is just like him. He has in truth a
great, kingly soul, and I shall never forget his action in this matter."
One more quotation completes the history of these stirring January days,
as written by Ibsen himself. It occurs in a letter to a Danish journalist,

Otto Borchsenius. "It may well be," the poet writes, "that the play is in
several respects rather daring. But it seemed to me that the time had
come for moving some boundary-posts. And this was an undertaking
for which a man of the older generation, like myself, was better fitted
than the many younger authors who might desire to do something of
the kind. I was prepared for a storm; but such storms one must not
shrink from encountering. That would be cowardice."
It happened that, just in these days, the present writer had frequent
opportunities of conversing with Ibsen, and of hearing from his own
lips almost all the views expressed in the above extracts. He was
especially emphatic, I remember, in protesting against the notion that
the opinions expressed by Mrs. Alving or Oswald were to be attributed
to himself. He insisted, on the contrary, that Mrs. Alving's views were
merely typical of the moral chaos inevitably produced by re-action
from the narrow conventionalism represented by Manders.
With one consent, the leading theatres of the three Scandinavian
capitals declined to have anything to do with the play. It was more than
eighteen months old before it found its way to the stage at all. In
August 1883 it was acted for the first time at Helsingborg, Sweden, by
a travelling company under the direction of an eminent Swedish actor,
August Lindberg, who himself played Oswald. He took it on tour round
the principal cities of Scandinavia, playing it, among the rest, at a
minor theatre in Christiania. It happened that the boards of the
Christiania Theatre were at the same time occupied by a French farce;
and public demonstrations of protest were made against the managerial
policy which gave _Tête de Linotte_ the preference over Gengangere.
Gradually the prejudice against the play broke down. Already in the
autumn of 1883 it was produced at the Royal (Dramatiska) Theatre in
Stockholm. When the new National Theatre was opened in Christiania
in 1899, Gengangere found an early place in its repertory; and even the
Royal Theatre in Copenhagen has since opened its