The Feast at Solhoug

The Feast at Solhoug

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Feast at Solhoug, by Henrik Ibsen,
Translated by William Archer and Mary Morrison
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Title: The Feast at Solhoug
Author: Henrik Ibsen

Release Date: May 21, 2006 [eBook #18428]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FEAST
AT SOLHOUG***
E-text prepared by Douglas Levy

THE FEAST AT SOLHOUG.
by

HENRIK IBSEN
From The Collected Works of Henrik Ibsen, Volume 1 Revised and
Edited by William Archer
Translation by William Archer and Mary Morrison

INTRODUCTION*
Exactly a year after the production of Lady Inger of Ostrat--that is to
say on the "Foundation Day" of the Bergen Theatre, January 2,
1866--The Feast at Solhoug was produced. The poet himself has
written its history in full in the Preface to the second edition. The only
comment that need be made upon his rejoinder to his critics has been
made, with perfect fairness as it seems to me, by George Brandes in the
following passage:** "No one who is unacquainted with the
Scandinavian languages can fully understand the charm that the style
and melody of the old ballads exercise upon the Scandinavian mind.
The beautiful ballads and songs of Des Knaben Wunderhorn have
perhaps had a similar power over German minds; but, as far as I am
aware, no German poet has has ever succeeded in inventing a metre
suitable for dramatic purposes, which yet retained the mediaeval
ballad's sonorous swing and rich aroma. The explanation of the
powerful impression produced in its day by Henrik Hertz's Svend
Dyring's House is to be found in the fact that in it, for the first time, the
problem was solved of how to fashion a metre akin to that of the heroic
ballads, a metre possessing as great mobility as the verse of the
Niebelungenlied, along with a dramatic value not inferior to that of the
pentameter. Henrik Ibsen, it is true, has justly pointed out that, as
regards the mutual relations of the principal characters, _Svend
Dyring's House owes more to Kleist's Kathchen von Heubronn than
The Feast at Solhoug owes to Svend Dyring's House_. But the fact
remains that the versified parts of the dialogue of both _The Feast at
Solhoug and Olaf Liliekrans_ are written in that imitation of the tone
and style of the heroic ballad, of which Hertz was the happily-inspired
originator. There seems to me to be no depreciation whatever of Ibsen

in the assertion of Hertz's right to rank as his model. Even the greatest
must have learnt from some one."
But while the influence of Danish lyrical romanticism is apparent in the
style of the play, the structure, as it seems to me, shows no less clearly
that influence of the French plot-manipulators which we found so
unmistakably at work in Lady Inger. Despite its lyrical dialogue, The
Feast at Solhoug has that crispiness of dramatic action which marks the
French plays of the period. It may indeed be called Scribe's Bataille de
Dames writ tragic. Here, as in the Bataille de Dames (one of the earliest
plays produced under Ibsen's supervision), we have the rivalry of an
older and a younger woman for the love of a man who is proscribed on
an unjust accusation, and pursued by the emissaries of the royal power.
One might even, though this would be forcing the point, find an
analogy in the fact that the elder woman (in both plays a strong and
determined character) has in Scribe's comedy a cowardly suitor, while
in Ibsen's tragedy, or melodrama, she has a cowardly husband. In every
other respect the plays are as dissimilar as possible; yet it seems to me
far from unlikely that an unconscious reminiscence of the Bataille de
Dames may have contributed to the shaping of The Feast at Solhoug in
Ibsen's mind. But more significant than any resemblance of theme is
the similarity of Ibsen's whole method to that of the French school--the
way, for instance, in which misunderstandings are kept up through a
careful avoidance of the use of proper names, and the way in which a
cup of poison, prepared for one person, comes into the hands of another
person, is, as a matter of fact, drunk by no one but occasions the acutest
agony to the would-be poisoner. All this ingenious dovetailing of
incidents and working-up of misunderstandings, Ibsen unquestionably
learned from the French. The French language, indeed, is the only one
which has a word--quiproquo--to indicate the class of
misunderstanding which,