Henrik Ibsen - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Overview

Henrik Ibsen (ˈhɛnɾɪk ˈɪpsən; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

in the theatre. His major works include Brand
Brand (play)
Brand is a play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It is a verse tragedy, written in 1865 and first performed in Stockholm on 24 March 1867. Brand was an intellectual play that provoked much original thought....

, Peer Gynt
Peer Gynt
Peer Gynt is a five-act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen, loosely based on the fairy tale Per Gynt. It is the most widely performed Norwegian play. According to Klaus Van Den Berg, the "cinematic script blends poetry with social satire and realistic scenes with surreal ones"...

, An Enemy of the People
An Enemy of the People
An Enemy of the People is an 1882 play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen wrote it in response to the public outcry against his play Ghosts, which at that time was considered scandalous...

, Emperor and Galilean
Emperor and Galilean
Emperor and Galilean is a play written by Henrik Ibsen. Although it is one of the writer’s lesser known plays, on several occasions Henrik Ibsen called Emperor and Galilean his major work...

, A Doll's House
A Doll's House
A Doll's House is a three-act play in prose by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It premièred at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month....

, Hedda Gabler
Hedda Gabler
Hedda Gabler is a play first published in 1890 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The play premiered in 1891 in Germany to negative reviews, but has subsequently gained recognition as a classic of realism, nineteenth century theatre, and world drama...

, Ghosts
Ghosts (play)
Ghosts is a play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It was written in 1881 and first staged in 1882.Like many of Ibsen's better-known plays, Ghosts is a scathing commentary on 19th century morality....

, The Wild Duck
The Wild Duck
The Wild Duck is an 1884 play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.-Plot:The first act opens with a dinner party hosted by Håkon Werle, a wealthy merchant and industrialist. The gathering is attended by his son, Gregers Werle, who has just returned to his father's home following a self-imposed...

, and Rosmersholm
Rosmersholm
Rosmersholm is a play written in 1886 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. In the estimation of many critics the piece is Ibsen's masterwork, only equalled by The Wild Duck of 1884...

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Several of his plays were considered scandalous to many of his era, when European theater was required to model strict mores of family life and propriety.

Unanswered Questions

What was the private life and marriage of Henrik Ibsen

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Discussions

I `m working on this topic: "Sublime and fascism in Ibsen`s The Master Builder and John Gabriel Borkmann". But I do not know exactly how to start an...

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Quotations

Erring soul of man — if thou wast indeed forced to err, it shall surely be accounted to thee for good on that great day when the Mighty One shall descend in the clouds to judge the living dead and the dead who are yet alive!

Makrina, in Emperor and Galilean|Emperor and Galilean (1873), Final lines.

The great secret of power is never to will to do more than you can accomplish. The great secret of action and victory is to be capable of living your life without ideals. Such is the sum of the whole world's wisdom.

As quoted in The Ibsen Calendar : A Quotation from the Works of Henrik Ibsen for Every Day (1913) by C. A. Arfwedson

I hold that man is in the right who is most closely in league with the future.

Letter to Georg Brandes|Georg Brandes (3 January 1882)

The great task of our time is to blow up all existing institutions — to destroy.

Letter of 1883, quoted in The Drama of Ibsen and Strindberg (1962) by Frank Laurence Lucas, p. 34

Tvertimot!

On the contrary!

I thank God that in the bath of Pain He purged my love. What strong compulsion drew Me on I knew not, till I saw in you The treasure I had blindly sought in vain. I praise Him, who our love has lifted thus To noble rank by sorrow, — licensed us To a triumphal progress, bade us sweep Thro' fen and forest to our castle-keep, A noble pair, astride on Pegasus|Pegasus!

Falk, Act III

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