If scholars had accepted without contest Ibsen's words on Kierkegaardian impulses in his plays, this important question would most likely have died in a cul-de-sac.¹ Similarly, if present day research continues on its long established tack and follows Pär Lagerkvist's pronouncements on, or rather, against Henrik Ibsen, the study which elucidates the artistic debt he owed his predecessor will never surface.

Ibsen är inte den store dramatikern: för så vitt man med dramatiker menar en diktare som först på scenen ser förverkligade alla sina intentioner, som skriver för scenen, vars dikt just där får sin mäktigaste resning och sin djupaste innebörd. Det finns bland alla hans dramer inget som verkligen vinner väsentligt på att framföras.²

Ibsen kan man gå utomkring; som en milstolpe med romersk siffra. Men Strindberg befinner sig mitt på vägen. …³

The former quote, written in Svenska Dagbladet by the same playwright who, only two years earlier, had created the interminable drama, Sista mänskan—most justifiably the only one of his plays never performed (one wonders really if it was meant to be)—and the latter words, which exhibit an all too facile disregard for the great expansion and dramatic potential contained within Ibsen's last plays, especially When We Dead Awaken (1899), are fairly typical of Lagerkvist's critical approach to Ibsen from the earliest years to the final revision of Modern teater. Even given the simplistic nature of these representative criticisms, however, one can understand, if not forgive, Lagerkvist for stating them, as he was writing in the intoxication of a hard-won personal dramatic form toward which he had been struggling, we now know, for at least eight years.⁴ But this cannot be the final word on Lagerkvist's appreciation, or lack of it, of Ibsen.

In examining the earliest poetry, programmatical writings, critical reviews, and Lagerkvist's first drama, a distinct ambivalence emerges as regards his view of the function of art and the artist; a paradoxical line which is mirrored in his own cloven personality and the structural and thematic foundations of his subsequent dramatic production, and consistently maintained in his critical approach to Henrik Ibsen. Of course, the question of critical ambivalence with regard to Ibsen is hardly a new one. Georg Brandes, for example, in his introduction to Hovedstrømninger, speaks of “en Art Rædsel” and “en Art Vellyst” in the same breath in discussing the reader's reaction to Brand.⁵ It is clear that Lagerkvist was one of those who fell victim to Ibsen's curious ability to inspire simultaneously admiration and loathing. Developing this theme in his study, The Poet in the Theater (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1946), Ronald Peacock quotes a letter from Henry James which, it shall be seen, is perfectly applicable to Pär Lagerkvist:

Yes, Ibsen is ugly, common, hard, prosaic, bottomlessly bourgeois—and with his distinction so far in, as it were, so behind doors and beyond vestibules, that one is excusable for not pushing one's way to it. And yet of his art he's a master—and I feel in him, to the pitch of almost intolerable boredom, the presence and the insistence of life.

(p. 77)

It seems to me that in our view of the Ibsen-Lagerkvist relationship we have taken the path of least resistance; our emphasis on the negative tone of Lagerkvist's criticism and his significance as Strindberg's dramatic successor have led us away from the fact that Ibsen was a positive force in Lagerkvist's literary life long before the “shoemaker realism” of Han som fick leva om sitt liv in 1928.

Later research and more complete dating of Lagerkvist's works have strengthened Sven Linnér's magisterial study of the dramatist's early years,⁶ the thesis of which was that the antithetical nature of the mature artist, “dubbelheten i hans inställning,” had its correspondence in the polarities inherent in his political, religious, social, and familial environments, what Harald Elovson called “en miljö som kunde ge en gynnsam jordmån för den som hade anlag för revolt.”⁷ This inner struggle was in turn given artistic life in the poetry and critical remarks of the same early period.⁸ In 1910, the year of his matriculation, for example, Lagerkvist's poem, “Den dagen,” appeared in Fram under the pseudonym Stig Stigson. Its first stanza bespeaks an obvious socialistically tendentious bent:

Den dagen då ingen är annans slav,
men alla få njuta, vad livet gav
av skönhet och sol och ljus;
den dagen skall skåda en mänskosläkt
till stoltare tankar och drömmar väckt
av mäktigare stormars brus.

Another typical example, from among many such “kampdikter,” appeared in the Christmas, 1912, number of Stormklockan; a poem which was to play a decisive, if mistaken, role in subsequent attempts to chart his artistic evolution:

Tiden är röd av blod och längtan
röd av vår strid och vår heta tro!
—händer vi sträcker i trots och trängtan
upp ur vår trötta vardagsro——
Fingrarna hårt
vi krama om facklor och kådiga bloss—
stugornas jus är intet för oss
längtare bort!
———lågor flamma där mörkret stod,
tiden är röd av längten och blod
—blodet är vårt!

Significantly, at the very same time that he was writing these battle poems, Lagerkvist was intensely involved in the burgeoning movement toward “ren konst,” centered in Paris, and by 1912—and possibly as early as the school years⁹—had already written a brochure which would ultimately emerge as Ordkonst och bildkonst (1913), whose central argument was directed against such tendentiousness and realism in “såväl lyrisk som episk och ofta även dramatisk diktning från idag …” (p. 35). Reviewing Apollinaire's book, Les peintres cubistes, in 1913, Lagerkvist advances the theory that a renaissance in literature can only come about through the application of cubistic principles, and that one should “mera söka det intressant konstnärliga än intressant mänskliga.”¹⁰ This striving for l'art pur and its transfer to literature was, of course, the cornerstone of Ordkonst och bildkonst and the seed of Modern teater (1918).

The peculiar inner ambivalence with which he was contending in regard to the role of the artist is epitomized in Lagerkvist's review, in the January 1913 Stormklockan, of Jeppe Aakjær's Vredens barn, for rather than supporting either the artist or the preacher, he lauds both. Here, Aakjær is praised for being:

Diktare i sin kärleksfulla och ypperliga skildring av hembygdens natur och småfolk, predikare när han grips av harm över att se folket släpa fram sitt liv, berövat den sunda kraft och glädje, som sol och jord, skönhet och bröd förmår skänka. Än har predikaren ordet, än diktaren—mycket ofta förenas de bådas röster till en: då får raderna en glödande ingivelse samt en blodfull tyngd över sig—man läser dem om och om igen.

In sum, while Lagerkvist was attacking naturalism for its tendentiousness, he was writing the poem whose title would give rise to the long held idea, eloquently propounded by Erik Hörnström, that he had experienced a clearly delineated period of social engagement, “den röda tiden.”¹¹ More importantly, while he was lambasting naturalism's attempt to reproduce life in realistic, imitative fashion—and thereby constructing the ramparts from which later to hurl his many critical missiles at the work of Henrik Ibsen (both in Modern teater and Svenska Dagbladet, where he was drama critic during the 1918-19 season)—he was writing a drama which exhibits many Ibsenian features in both technique and theme and which finds a particularly striking parallel in John Gabriel Borkman (1896).

Before proceeding to the comparative remarks it is important that one understand the underlying reason for Lagerkvist's expressed aversion to Ibsen since, as might be extrapolated from the above evidence, his attitude is frustratingly ambivalent. This is nowhere more manifest than in his reviews for Svenska Dagbladet. In criticizing Kärlekens komedi, which he found to be “tom och stupid,” for example, he characterizes Ibsen as “en gymnastistpoet,” and goes on to remark:

Det vidlåder så ofta hans skapelser något omöjligt och en smula löjligt, därför att de till varje pris från första repliken till den sista skola verka så laddade med idéer, så helt igenom väldiga, slående en värld med häpnad.¹²

Rather than concluding on this negative note, however, Lagerkvist tempers his assessment with the telling observation that Ibsen is “en genial diktare som säger sina tankar så att vi gripas och fascineras.” In his remarks on Byggmästare Solness a few weeks later, Lagerkvist continues in this curiously contradictory vein, praising Ibsen's passion and basic dramatic concept while noting:

Men det är en sak som ovillkorligen slår en varje gång man på nytt ser Ibsen spelas, vad som än spelas, äldre ting eller nyare: att han tillhör det förflutna. …¹³

Later in the same month, discussing Gerhard Gran's book, Henrik Ibsen, Lagerkvist speaks of Ibsen's figures as “underligt livlösa,” while simultaneously paying him great tribute: “i sina mandomsverk en stor, egendomlig lyriker, med tyngd och djup som få i hans samtid.”¹⁴ This last remark is particularly interesting because, in the previous review, Lagerkvist had consigned Ibsen to the past, using one of these mature works, Byggmästare Solness, as the point of attack: “vad som än spelas, äldre ting eller nyare … han tillhör det förflutna.”

The key to understanding the logic in these apparently self-contradictory critical writings lies, I suggest, in Lagerkvist's review, “Strindberg och Ibsen på dansk scen,” written in 1918, for while he takes Ibsen to task once again and, once again, in hesitant fashion—“denna märkliga blandning av seminarist och geni”—his real concern is not the dramatist, but the drama, not Ibsen, but what he ironically calls the “Ibsen method”:

Människorna tyckas glida fram över scenen, ikke gå. Man hör inga steg. Det är som om de hade hjul under sig och drogos i en osynlig tråd. Så overkligt och diskret allting sker. De blott tala. Resonera, känna, lida, känna ännu en gång, resonera ännu en gång. För att äntligen ge upp alltsammans i övertygelse om att det dock inte kan ordnas.¹⁵

Seeking to loosen what he regards as the naturalistic grip on contemporary drama, Lagerkvist drops his gauntlet at the feet of the man he considers to be its leading exponent, Ibsen. It is not Ibsen the thinker or Ibsen the poet who is being challenged, but the naturalistic tradition, the realistic platform upon which Ibsen's great dramatic ideas are presented. Interestingly enough, in Ordkonst och bildkonst Lagerkvist similarly attacked Strindberg as an obsolescent figure, “en sista värdig representant för gångna tiders diktarideal.” It was not until some forty years later, through his brother Gunnar, that Lagerkvist finally clarified this misleading remark by explaining that the criticism was made not from an artistic perspective, but against Strindberg as a representative of “en gången tids pseudo-vetenskaplighet i skönlitteraturen.”¹⁶

It is significant that, in his reviews, Lagerkvist's criticism is consistently leveled at this “Ibsen method,” even where other dramatists are concerned. Speaking of Wiers-Jensen's comedy, Två världar, for instance, he complains about its “ändlösa diskussioner,” and that “folk sitter på en massa vita stolar och pratar idioti.”¹⁷ And in a review of Strindberg's Karl XII he criticizes the static performance: “En föreställning som lämnade en kall, mest böjd att reflektera över vad som inte fanns där. Och det är ju dock inte meningen. Man vill bli gripen, upprörd, begeistrad. Får man blott lov.”¹⁸

That Lagerkvist ultimately appreciated Ibsen's importance has been shown in Thomas Buckman's study of textual changes in Modern teater, where a remark deprecatory to Ibsen's significance was removed, in 1956, by a more mellow Lagerkvist.¹⁹ Buckman also notes, as have I above, that as early as 1919, the period of Lagerkvist's sojourn at Svenska Dagbladet, the playwright had had occasion to view Ibsen with favor. In fact, Lagerkvist appears to have accorded Ibsen the sincerest form of flattery in his drama of 1911, Livet.²⁰

The correspondences between John Gabriel Borkman and Livet begin with the central figures, John Gabriel and Dr. Valdemar Borj, both pillars of society—the one a former financial entrepreneur, the other a retired teacher—whose sheer strength of personality has set them above and apart from their peers. At the same time, both men have committed transgressions against their respective societies, crimes which they are not eager to recognize as such, and in both instances they are extremely egocentric and callous to all about them who do not defer to their wishes. There is a certain similarity, too, in the nature of their sins, though the motivations may differ. Borkman's error, simply stated, is that he has rejected human love for love of power, while Borj's dilemma is that he has coldly exploited a young woman's love in the past and now, fearing shame (a concern given ample exposure in John Gabriel Borkman), refuses to acknowledge paternity of Ingrid, the product of that relationship.

Just as Borkman dwells in self-imposed isolation, awaiting what he hopes will be a triumphant return to the society which has not understood him or his deeds, Borj spends his days in an escapist realm of flatulent philosophizing on the value of his life as a man “utan fläck på pannan,” who at the end wants to look back and see “… en banad väg! Så man kan visa att spåren inte jömts i sand.” Both men, in short, eschew the oppressive light of reality.

Importantly, both figures—who considered themselves to be exceptional—sustained, and were in turn sustained by, men of average talents. In this regard, from figures such as Ibsen's Stråmand and Agnes to the WC attendant and numerous other everyday inhabitants of Lagerkvist's literary pauper's world—characters whose basic humanity and decency elevate them to far more important positions than their relatively minor roles may at first suggest—the playwrights share a dramatic technique. It is noteworthy, moreover, that the relationships Borkman-Foldal and Borj-Värring reach their climaxes in remarkably similar fashion, in what I call the “schism scenes” in both works; that is, at that point where the seemingly weaker figures, Foldal and Värring, are forced to assert themselves for the first time in their lengthy friendships with the central characters and thereby renounce their dependency.

When Foldal begins to waver in his belief that Borkman has any possibility of regaining power, “Det er ikke noe prejudikat for slikt,” Borkman maintains flatly that he, John Gabriel, belongs to the “unntagelsemennesker,” much the same as Borj haughtily reacts to Värring's insistence that Borj has no right to insult him: “Det tar jag mej rätt till!” In both cases, the arguments which led to the separation were precipitated by injured pride, loss of confidence, and mutual doubt. When Foldal attempts to present an elevated, poetic idea, he is met with cruel disparagement from Borkman:

FOLDAL (varmt):
Jo, John Gabriel, det nytter allikevel. Det er så lykkelig og så velsignet å tenke på at ute, rundt om oss, langt borte,—der finnes dog den sanne kvinne.
BORKMAN (flytter seg utålmodig i sofaen):
Å, la bare være med den diktersnakk!

It is at this critical juncture that Foldal, smarting from his old friend's acerbic remark, expresses doubt concerning Borkman's plans for reacquisition of his former status. And now Ibsen allows John Gabriel to speak the words which, in view of Foldal's recently uttered statement, “min lille dikterverden har stor verdi for meg, John Gabriel,” can only annihilate his friend:

BORKMAN (hårdt og avgjørende):
Du er ingen dikter, Vilhelm.

Similar treatment is accorded Värring after his highly emotional and revealingly poetic reply to Borj's question as to whether his past has been “helt och fläckfritt”:

VäRRING:
Nej! det var det inte! utan både trasigt och smutsigt med! men det har jag erkänt
också! öppet och ärligt! och
sen har jag försökt laga och lappa! och tvätta bort
fläckarna det har jag! så gott jag kunnat och det jag inte kunnat har jag åtminstone velat! det vet du!
Och en dag—en dag kanske jag ska kunna utplåna allt! alla fläckar! och lappa varenda rispa
den dagen kanske kommer du! Då har jag mitt livs mening i min hand! här i min hand! då knyter jag näven! förstår du!
och väntar på döden
BORJ:
Ha! mycket jupsinnigt! lappskräddare!

The result of Borj's insulting reply is that Värring, for the first time in their long association, becomes recalcitrant. Borj desperately rejects the charges against him and accuses Värring of defaming him with “lögner och oförskämdheter,” not unlike Borkman's reaction to Foldal's apostasy: “Her har du altså hele tiden løyet for meg.” Foldal, however, insists that he has never lied to Borkman, that their relationship was built upon mutual faith, and that as long as this confidence was inviolate, there could be no lying:

Det var ikke løgn så lenge du trodde på mitt kall. Så lenge du trodde på meg, så lenge trodde jeg på deg.

This same idea is voiced by Värring in his reply to Borj's charge of mendacity. Since the mutual trust which constituted the basis of their comradeship was no longer intact, Värring could, with full justification, topple Borj:

Och tar du dej rätt att trampa och håna mej och mitt liv så tar jag mej rätt att fordra fram sanningen i ditt! så att jag kan jöra dej rättvisa också! Sanningen sanningen! den är något som jag likväl aldrig brutit mot! hur dålig och usel jag än varit! aldrig mot sanningen du!

Borkman, after stating that the most infamous crime a human can commit is “venns missbruk av venns tillit,” coldly shatters the hope he himself has fostered in his friend. Valdeman Borj, too, realizing he can no longer control his life-long comrade, and seeking to curry favor with Krans, betrays Värring, calling him “en tarvlig människa! förbanne mej en simpel, en tarvlig människa.”

The figure of Gustav Krans is also pertinent to this Ibsen connection, although not in the John Gabriel Borkman context; one is drawn, rather, to certain similarities between him and two other Ibsenian protagonists, Relling and Gregers Werle. Krans lies somewhere between these men, making use of their more positive qualities, while avoiding the pitfalls of escapism and overzealousness which may be said to characterize their respective approaches to life. Imbued with the same sense of mission in the search for truth as is Werle, Krans is able to temper his actions with compassion—a quality alien to Werle's rigid behavior—for he realizes that while truth must be sought, he knows, as does Relling, that this ideal is often far less than perfect once attained:

det är ett så stolt ord det där ordet med
sanningen i …
Fast märkvärdigt:alltid har ordet varit krympling
på något vis ena gången med krycka andra med puckel
och alltid med krymplingens förvridna drag och tomma,
urgrävda ögon!

In fact, Krans' posture (“Jag älskar skenet: för det bedrager … den rena lögnen är jag rent förtjust i …”) is no less than a Lagerkvistian paraphrase of Ibsen's “life's lie” theme.

Lest it be suggested that by forcing the terrible truth upon the children Krans acts as reprehensibly as Werle, it must be noted that the Ekdal family was functioning very well without the latter's “demand,” whereas Krans was motivated by the necessity of warding off an unwitting and potentially tragic incestuous relationship. In The Wild Duck the truth destroys, while its revelation in Livet is a constructive act leading to self-awareness. Neither as coldly intransigent as Werle, nor as willing as Relling to camouflage reality, Krans nonetheless exhibits traits common to both.

In his study, “The Unexpected Visitor in Ibsen's Late Plays,” Richard Schechner examines, from a Jungian perspective, the surprise appearance and dramatic impact of a figure from out of the central figure's past, “a promise unkept,” whose function it is to demand something of the hero:

… and whether the demand is running off to sea, clearing the rats out of the house, wreathing the highest spire, climbing “up into the light, where glory shines,” or the voice which prophesies that “you will never ride triumphant into your cold kingdom”—they drive the hero to his final achievement, and in the cases of Solness, Borkman and Rubek, to death.²¹

One finds an obvious parallel in Livet in the sudden appearance of the Old Lady Selling Roses, whom Borj had mistreated many years earlier, like Ella to Borkman, his “promise unkept.” Just as the struggle between life and art is personified by the Ella-Borkman relationship, the tragic confrontation between the Old Lady and Borj signals the ubiquitous Lagerkvistian metaphysical battle between light and darkness. There are many other similarities in this “stranger” motif, between both playwrights, including the technical problems inherent in presenting such a figure in believable fashion. Schechner notes, for example, that in some cases (The Lady From the Sea and Little Eyolf):

… there is such a jarring disparity between the language and manners of the introjected thought-people and the other, normal persons on stage that the plays tend to fall apart. At one moment we are asked to accept what is happening as conventional “reality”; at the next we are shown a demon rising up full-blown from the depths of the mind.²²

That this problem haunts Livet is perfectly evident from the discordant, indeed demonic, effect of the Old Lady's gutter language and coarse actions on the innocent children and the circumspect pensioned teachers.

The one great difference between Livet and John Gabriel Borkman (and Ibsen's other late plays), is that Ibsen was seeking, through his concern for the extraordinary individual, to define the plight of the artist, whereas Lagerkvist's central aim, even as early as 1911, was to find a rational explanation for the problematical relationship of man to life. If, as Schechner suggests, realization of his situation as an artist, totally isolated by fate, leads Borkman to his death,²³ in Livet self-realization, the demise of his formerly egocentric soul, prepares Borj for continued life; a far more optimistic conclusion. Despite the divergent philosophical goals of Ibsen and Lagerkvist, and the latter's critical protests notwithstanding, however, both plays seem to be cut from the same dramatic cloth, and in addition to exhibiting the correspondences noted above, and a realistic approach to dialogue and action, Livet also adheres quite closely to Michael Meyer's characterization of the crux of John Gabriel Borkman:

… it is about emotional bankruptcy, the buried treasures of the heart that lie unmined, how a man may gain the whole world and lose his soul.²⁴

To Gösta Bergman, Lagerkvist confided that Han som fick leva om sitt liv—generally recognized as the dividing line between his expressionistic and more realistic dramatic production—came as a reaction against “det uppdrivna experimenterandet på scenen, mot det oroliga, söndersplittrade,”²⁵ in short, against everything he himself had been doing for the previous ten years. It now appears that Lagerkvist's earlier critical remarks on Ibsen fit the same mold; are statements, that is, against not only his predecessor, but his own dramatic experimentation. The truth is that Pär Lagerkvist could no more go around Ibsen than he could Strindberg, and that while all research moves in the tracks laid down by Lagerkvist's formal utterances, it is high time to reappraise Ibsen's significance for his dramatic development.

Notes

1. Ibsen's well-known remark in a letter to Frederik Hegel (3/8/1867) sums up the dramatist's attitude: “… Kierkegaard, of whom I have read little and understood less.” Quoted from Evert Sprinchorn, ed., Ibsen. Letters and Speeches (New York: Hill and Wang, 1964), pp. 62-63.

2. Pär Lagerkvist, rev. of Henrik Ibsen, by Gerhard Gran, Svenska Dagbladet (SvD), 2/14/1919.

3. Lagerkvist, Modern teater (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1956), p. 35.

4. See Bengt Larsson, “Den röda tiden och den rena konsten. Pär Lagerkvists litterära utveckling fram till Ordkonst och bildkonst,” Samlaren 45 (1964), 19-39; Leif Åslund, Pär Lagerkvists Ordkonst och bildkonst. Studier i dess konst- och litteraturhistoriska bakgrund. Diss. Uppsala, 1957; and Robert T. Rovinsky, “The Path to Self-Realization: An Analysis of Lagerkvist's Livet (1911),” SS 45 (1973), 107-27.

5. Hovedstrømninger i Det Nittende Aarhundredes Litteratur, vol. I (Copenhagen: Nordisk Forlag, 1923), p. 14.

6. Sven Linnér, “Pär Lagerkvists barndomsmiljö,” Samlaren 28 (1947), 53-90.

7. Elovson, “Från Pär Lagerkvists läroår,” in Gunnar Tideström, ed., Synpunkter på Pär Lagerkvist (Stockholm: Aldus/Bonniers, 1966), p. 47.

8. See Åslund, pp. 35-43, “Pär Lagerkvists röda dikter,” and pp. 51-59, “Recensionerna i Stormklockan.”

9. Gösta Lilja, Det moderna måleriet i svensk kritik 1905-1914. Diss. Uppsala, 1955, p. 248.

10. “En bok om kubism,” SvD, 8/16/1913.

11. Pär Lagerkvist, Från den röda tiden till Det eviga leendet (Stockholm, 1946).

12. “Kärlekens komedi,” SvD, 1/18/1919.

13. “Byggmästare Solness på Intima Teatern,” SvD, 2/2/1919.

14. See note 2 above.

15. SvD, 5/26/1918.

16. Åslund, p. 57.

17. SvD, 1/4/1919.

18. “Strindbergs Karl XII på Dramatiska Teatern,” SvD, 12/1/1918.

19. “Stylistic and Textual Changes in Modern teater,” SS 33 (1961), pp. 142-43. The statement removed by Lagerkvist: “… besides [Ibsen] only fills, in an admirable way, an unoccupied place which otherwise would have been empty.”

20. For a detailed analysis of this play, see Rovinsky, SS 45 (1973), pp. 107-27.

21. In Rolf Fjelde, ed., Ibsen (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1965), p. 159.

22. Ibid., p. 167.

23. Ibid., p. 164.

24. Ibsen (New York: Doubleday, 1971), p. 747.

25. Bergman, Pär Lagerkvists dramatik (Stockholm, 1928), p. 171.