Wisdom! Light! Beauty! A Thematic Analysis of Ibsen's Emperor and Galilean

Abstract

Hernik Ibsen's Emperor and Galilean is a huge play in which the playwright wrestles with fundamental ideological systems of world-shaking significance. The spiritual agonies of one man, Julian the apostate and emperor, spill out to engulf the entire fourth-century Roman world, with implications for all future generations. Ibsen asserted, "My play deals with a struggle between two irreconcilable powers in the life of the world — a struggle which will always repeat itself. Because of this universality, I call the book 'a world-historic drama.’” He chose a mammoth dramatic canvas because "Only entire nations ... can join in great intellectual movements. A change of front in our conception of life and of the world is no parochial matter." "Inter-national" in size and scope — in political, social, moral, philosophical, and religious terms — Emperor and Galilean is fundamentally a play of ideas. At its thematic core are found the clash of universal ideologies, their predicated synthesis into a new belief system, and a resultant, inevitable intellectual and spiritual progress.