The Project Gutenberg eBook, John Gabriel Borkman, by Henrik Ibsen, Translated by William ArcherThis eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it,give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online atwww.gutenberg.orgTitle: John Gabriel BorkmanAuthor: Henrik IbsenRelease Date: July 8, 2006 [eBook #18792]Language: EnglishCharacter set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN***E-text prepared by Douglas LevyThe Collected Works of Henrik Ibsen, Volume XIJOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN.byHENRIK IBSENTranslation and Introduction by William Archer.INTRODUCTION.*The anecdotic history of John Gabriel Borkman is even scantier than that of Little Eyolf. It is true that two mentions ofit occur in Ibsen's letters, but they throw no light whatever upon its spiritual antecedents. Writing to George Brandesfrom Christiania, on April 24, 1896, Ibsen says: "In your last letter you make the suggestion that I should visit London.If I knew enough English, I might perhaps go. But as I unfortunately do not, I must give up the idea altogether.Besides, I am engaged in preparing for a big new work, and I do not wish to put off the writing of it longer thannecessary. It might so easily happen that a roof-tile fell on my head before I had 'found time to make the last verse.'And what then?" On October 3 of the ...
The Project Gutenberg eBook, John Gabriel
Borkman, by Henrik Ibsen, Translated by William
Archer
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at
no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever.
You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the
terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: John Gabriel Borkman
Author: Henrik Ibsen
Release Date: July 8, 2006 [eBook #18792]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG
EBOOK JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN***
E-text prepared by Douglas LevyThe Collected Works of Henrik Ibsen, Volume XI
JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN.
by
HENRIK IBSEN
Translation and Introduction by William Archer.
INTRODUCTION.*
The anecdotic history of John Gabriel Borkman is
even scantier than that of Little Eyolf. It is true that
two mentions of it occur in Ibsen's letters, but they
throw no light whatever upon its spiritualantecedents. Writing to George Brandes from
Christiania, on April 24, 1896, Ibsen says: "In your
last letter you make the suggestion that I should
visit London. If I knew enough English, I might
perhaps go. But as I unfortunately do not, I must
give up the idea altogether. Besides, I am engaged
in preparing for a big new work, and I do not wish
to put off the writing of it longer than necessary. It
might so easily happen that a roof-tile fell on my
head before I had 'found time to make the last
verse.' And what then?" On October 3 of the same
year, writing to the same correspondent, he again
alludes to his work as "a new long play, which must
be completed as soon as possible." It was, as a
matter of fact, completed with very little delay, for it
appeared in Copenhagen on December 15, 1896.
The irresponsible gossip of the time made out that
Bjornson discerned in the play some personal
allusions to himself; but this Bjornson emphatically
denied. I am not aware that any attempt has been
made to identify the original of the various
characters. It need scarcely be pointed out that in
the sisters Gunhild and Ella we have the pair of
women, one strong and masterful, the other tender
and devoted, who run through so many of Ibsen's
plays, from The Feast at Solhoug onwards—nay,
even from Catalina. In my Introduction to The Lady
from the Sea (p. xxii) it is pointed out that Ibsen
had the character of Foldal clearly in his mind
when, in March 1880, he made the first draft ofthat play. The character there appears as: "The old
married clerk. Has written a play in his youth which
was only once acted. Is for ever touching it up, and
lives in the illusion that it will be published and will
make a great success. Takes no steps, however,
to bring this about. Nevertheless accounts himself
one of the 'literary' class. His wife and children
believe blindly in the play." By the time Foldal
actually came to life, the faith of his wife and
children had sadly dwindled away.
There was scarcely a theatre in Scandinavia or
Finland at which John Gabriel Borkman was not
acted in the course of January 1897. Helsingors
led the way with performances both at the Swedish
and the Finnish Theatres on January 10.
Christiania and Stockholm followed on January 25,
Copenhagen on January 31; and meanwhile the
piece had been presented at many provincial
theatres as well. In Christiania, Borkman, Gunhild,
and Ella were played by Garmann, Fru Gundersen,
and Froken Reimers respectively; in Copenhagen,
by Emil Pousen, Fru Eckhardt, and Fru Hennings.
In the course of 1897 it spread all over Germany,
beginning with Frankfort on Main, where, oddly
enough, it was somewhat maltreated by the
Censorship. In London, an organization calling
itself the New Century Theatre presented John
Gabriel Borkman at the Strand Theatre on the
afternoon of May 3, 1897, with Mr. W. H. Vernon
as Borkman, Miss Genevieve Ward as Gunhild,Miss Elizabeth Robins as Ella Rentheim, Mr. Martin
Harvey as Erhart, Mr. James Welch as Foldal, and
Mrs. Beerbohm Tree as Mrs. Wilton. The first
performance in America was given by the Criterion
Independent Theatre of New York on November
18, 1897, Mr. E. J. Henley playing Borkman, Mr.
John Blair Erhart, Miss Maude Banks Gunhild, and
Miss Ann Warrington Ella. For some reason, which
I can only conjecture to be the weakness of the the
third act, the play seems nowhere to have taken a
very firm hold on the stage.
Dr. Brahm has drawn attention to the great
similarity between the theme of John Gabriel
Borkman and that of Pillars of Society. "In both,"
he says, "we have a business man of great ability
who is guilty of a crime; in both this man is placed
between two sisters; and in both he renounces a
marriage of inclination for the sake of a marriage
that shall further his business interests." The
likeness is undeniable; and yet how utterly unlike
are the two plays! and how immeasurably superior
the later one! It may seem, on a superficial view,
that in John Gabriel Borkman Ibsen has returned
to prose and the common earth after his excursion
into poetry and the possibly supernatural, if I may
so call it, in The Master Builder and Little Eyolf. But
this is a very superficial view indeed. We have only
to compare the whole invention of John Gabriel
Borkman with the invention of Pillars of Society, to
realise the difference between the poetry and theprose of drama. The quality of imagination which
conceived the story of the House of Bernick is
utterly unlike that which conceived the tragedy of
the House of Borkman. The difference is not
greater between (say) The Merchant of Venice and
King Lear.
The technical feat which Ibsen here achieves of
carrying through without a single break the whole
action of a four-act play has been much
commented on and admired. The imaginary time of
the drama is actually shorter than the real time of
representation, since the poet does not even leave
intervals for the changing of the scenes. This feat,
however, is more curious than important. Nothing
particular is gained by such a literal observance of
the unity of time. For the rest, we feel definitely in
John Gabriel Borkman what we already felt vaguely
in Little Eyolf—that the poet's technical staying-
power is beginning to fail him. We feel that the
initial design was larger and more detailed than the
finished work. If the last acts of The Wild Duck and
Hedda Gabler be compared with the last acts of
Little Eyolf and Borkman, it will be seen that in the
earlier plays it relaxes towards the close, to make
room for pure imagination and lyric beauty. The
actual drama is over long before the curtain falls on
either play, and in the one case we have Rita and
Allmers, in the other Ella and Borkman, looking
back over their shattered lives and playing chorus
to their own tragedy. For my part, I set the highestvalue on these choral odes, these mournful
antiphones, in which the poet definitely triumphs
over the mere playwright. They seem to me noble
and beautiful in themselves, and as truly artistic, if
not as theatrical, as any abrupter catastrophe
could be. But I am not quite sure that they are
exactly the conclusions the poet originally
projected, and still less am I satisfied that they are
reached by precisely the paths which he at first
designed to pursue.
The traces of a change of scheme in John Gabriel
Borkman seem to me almost unmistakable. The
first two acts laid the foundation for a larger and
more complex superstructure than is ultimately
erected. Ibsen seems to have designed that
Hinkel, the man who "betrayed" Borkman in the
past, should play some efficient part in the
alienation of Erhart from his family and home.
Otherwise, why this insistence on a "party" at the
Hinkels', which is apparently to serve as a sort of
"send-off" for Erhart and Mrs. Wilton? It appears in
the third act that the "party" was imaginary. "Erhart
and I were the whole party," says Mrs. Wilton, "and
little Frida, of course." We might, then, suppose it
to have been a mere blind to enable Erhart to
escape from home; but, in the first place, as Erhart
does not live at home, there is no need for any
such pretext; in the second place, it appears that
the trio do actually go to the Hinkels' house (since
Mrs. Borkman's servant finds them there), and doactually make it their starting-point. Erhart comes
and goes with the utmost freedom in Mrs. Wilton's
own house; what possible reason can they have for
not setting out from there? No reason is shown or
hinted. We cannot even imagine that the Hinkels
have been instrumental in bringing Erhart and Mrs.
Wilton together; it is expressly stated that Erhart
made her acquaintance and saw a great deal of
her in town, before she moved out to the country.
The whole conception of the party at the Hinkels'
is, as it stands, mysterious and a little
cumbersome. We are forced to conclude, I think,
that something more was at one time intended to
come of it, and that, when the poet abandoned the
idea, he did not think it worth while to remove the
scaffolding. To this change of plan, too, we may
possibly trace what I take to be the one serious
flaw in the the play—the comparative weakness of
the second half of the third act. The scene of
Erhart's rebellion against the claims of the mother,
aunt, and father strikes one as the symmetrical
working out of a problem rather than a passage of
living drama.
All this means, of course, that there is a certain
looseness of fibre in John Gabriel Borkman which
we do not find in the best of Ibsen's earlier works.
But in point of intellectual power and poetic beauty
it yields to none of its predecessors. The
conception of the three leading figures is one of the
great things of literature; the second act, with theexquisite humour of the Foldal scene, and the
dramatic intensity of the encounter between
Borkman and Ella, is perhaps the finest single act
Ibsen ever wrote, in prose at all events; and the
last scene is a thing of rare and exalted beauty.
One could wish that the poet's last words to us had
been those h