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Henrik IbsenNorwegian playwright
Date of Birth: 20.03.1828
Country: ![]() |
Content:
- Biography of Henrik Ibsen
- The Theatrical Renaissance and Symbolism
- The Norwegian Patriarch
- Legacy and Recognition
Biography of Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen, a Norwegian playwright, was born in 1828 and became a literary patriarch by the turn of the 20th century. He was a contemporary of Leo Tolstoy, and his popularity in Russia during that time is almost unimaginable today. His powerful characters, exposed passions, and aphoristic Nietzschean style of writing had a narcotic effect on the Russian people. Schoolgirls idolized the character of Solvieg, while students became enthralled to the point of suicide. Ibsen himself was mythologized, seen not just as a playwright but as a wise seer, and his venerable age inspired reverence.
The Theatrical Renaissance and Symbolism
Ibsen's rise to fame coincided with the theatrical renaissance in Russia and the emergence of a new literary movement called symbolism. However, the symbolsists were young and the Russian audience was turning their gaze toward the West. The German Gerhart Hauptmann ("Before Sunrise", "The Sunken Bell"), the Belgian Maurice Maeterlinck ("The Blind", "Death of Tintagiles"), and the Norwegian Henrik Ibsen ("Peer Gynt", "Hedda Gabler", "The Master Builder") dominated the Russian stage. This period was not yet symbolism itself, but merely its precursor. Nonetheless, the Russian audience had to get used to it.
The Norwegian Patriarch
By this time, Henrik Ibsen was already a literary patriarch. He was in his seventies, the same age as Leo Tolstoy. His portraits depicted him with the likeness of the Germanic pagan god Odin - powerful, as if carved from rough stone from the northern mountains, framed by a white glacial mane and a frosty beard with full sideburns. Norway, a country of mountains that plunge into the ocean, had its capital called Christiania. Although the Norwegians were no longer the fearsome Vikings who terrified Europe a thousand years ago, they still thirsted for independence from Sweden (which they achieved in 1905). They were permeated with a peculiar North German stoicism and the spirit of skaldic poetry. Within them, despite their outward Europeanization and composure, lay an archaic sense of the land and primal power, which the armchair philosopher Nietzsche would enthusiastically describe, and which Knut Hamsun would later transfer into his novels, and which the Russian audience would feel with equal enthusiasm and trepidation through Ibsen's plays, yearning for heroism.
Legacy and Recognition
The popularity of Ibsen in Russia during that time is difficult to comprehend today. His strong characters, exposed passions, and aphoristic Nietzschean style of writing had a narcotic effect on the Russian people. Schoolgirls idolized the character of Solvieg, while students became enthralled to the point of suicide. Ibsen himself was mythologized, seen not just as a playwright but as a wise seer, and his venerable age inspired reverence. However, with the rise of Russia's Silver Age, the Ibsenmania faded away and eventually disappeared. Henrik Ibsen took his rightful place in the pantheon of world literature classics. If a "playwright assembly" were to be formed with one author per country, Norway would have no other candidate but Ibsen.