The Square Root of Ibsen

Abstract

THE SQUARE ROOT OF mSEN THE ESSENCE OF IBSEN is elusive and indefinable, and even more so the quintessence of Ibsen; but the square root is quite another thing. Because it is simultaneously plus and minus, it resolves all disparate elements in a profound and empirically acceptable ambiguity. So thinks J. W. McFarlane, Professor of Scandinavian at the University of Durham in Newcastle, and if ever a man had the opportunity to discover the square root of Ibsen it is Professor McFarlane, who is translating and editing the Oxford Ibsen, the first scholarly edition of a Scandinavian author to appear in English in our time or any time. Professor McFarlane approaches Ibsen with a rich knowledge of Norwegian backgrounds, as is evidenced by his critical volume, Ibsen and the Temper of Norwegian Literature, which immediately preceded volumes V and VI of the Oxford Ibsen, the only two volumes yet available.1 Rather than make a firm line of demarcation between the two projects, I should prefer to consider first McFarlane the critic, wherever the criticism may appear, and then McFarlane the editor/ translator. Ibsen and the Temper of Norwegian Literature is a misnomer, thanks to the publisher I suspect, and not to the author. Ibsen's name sells a book these days, but not so with Knut Hamsun. Mr. McFarlane's best essay, by all odds, is that on Hamsun. It was admired when it first appeared in PMLA a few years back, and in its revised condition it reads even better. Mr. McFarlane conducts the standard literary survey with breadth, urbanity, and ease. He solicits the optimal infusion of biography and evaluates the canon with balance and authority. This skill is demonstrated throughout the volume, but most crisply in the Hamsun essay. On the continent it is easy enough and customary to publish a volume of occasional literary essays under some such· title as Views and Opinions, Literary Studies, Norwegian Writing: Views and Reviews , or Hamsun and Other Norwegians, for example. You pick it. The desultory, but no less serious, reader will learn a great deal about Norwegian literature from just such a volume as this one, if he does not trouble himself looking for the implied thread. Mr. McFarlane is entirely modest in his disclaimer, by the way. "There is no suggestion ," he writes, "that these separate essays could by any kind 1. Ibsen and the TBmfJ8f' of Norwegian Literature, London: Oxford University Press, 1960, 208 pp., 21 sbillings; Ibsen Vol. V. PiUars of Society, A Doll's Howe, Ghosts, London: Oxford University Press, 1961,499 PP.I $7.00; Ibsen Vol. VI. An Enemy of the People, The W.'ld Duck, R08m8f'sholm, London: Oxfol'l1 University Press, 1960, 464 pp., $5.75; New York: Oxfol'l1 University Press (Hesperides Book), 1961, paper $2.25. 431 432 MODERN DRAMA February of arithmetic add up to literary history." Now Mr. McFarlane, I suspect, loves arithmetic almost as much as he does literature, but he is intent upon the touchstones and especially those that have meaning to an English speaking and reading audience. Norwegians have been shocked, for example, that Anglo-American audiences are "insulated against the spell" of BjfIJmstjerne BjfIJrnson, and even more by the opinion that his works are "too deeply riven by serious flaws of taste, of artistry, of structural design"; but it is a sober judgment that finds acceptance elsewhere. The essays on Wergeland, Jonas Lie, Kielland, Obstfelder, and Undset are also informed and authoritative. Discussion of the literature of Nynorsk, the somewhat synthetic Norwegian built upon dialectal foundations, is sketchy; and, in general, poetry is hardly treated at all on grounds of the "paucity of translated lyric." Such playwrights as Gunnar Heiberg, Helge Krog, and Nordahl Greig are omitted, however much they may characterize the temper of Norwegian literature. Dramatic criticism largely resides in the chapters on Holberg, included because he was Norwegian born, and Ibsen; and it is disquieting. To McFarlane, tragedy and comedy differ as between a "plumping out or paring down," an expression which has something to do with the way ideas are spatialized in the play. Comedy dissatisfies him generally, because "exemplary ideals can rarely be successfully objectified or personified...