Previous - next
It is impossible--or
so it seems to me--to extract any sort of general idea from it. One
cannot even call it a satire, unless one is prepared to apply that
term to the record of a "case" in a work of criminology. Reverting
to Dumas's dictum that a play should contain "a painting, a judgment,
an ideal," we may say the _Hedda Gabler_ fulfils only the first of
these requirements. The poet does not even pass judgment on his
heroine: he simply paints her full-length portrait with scientific
impassivity. But what a portrait! How searching in insight, how
brilliant in colouring, how rich in detail! Grant Allen's remark,
above quoted, was, of course, a whimsical exaggeration; the Hedda
type is not so common as all that, else the world would quickly
come to an end. But particular traits and tendencies of the Hedda
type are very common in modern life, and not only among women.
Hyperaesthesia lies at the root of her tragedy. With a keenly
critical, relentlessly solvent intelligence, she combines a morbid
shrinking from all the gross and prosaic detail of the sensual life.
She has nothing to take her out of herself--not a single intellectual
interest or moral enthusiasm. She cherishes, in a languid way, a
petty social ambition; and even that she finds obstructed and
baffled. At the same time she learns that another woman has had
the courage to love and venture all, where she, in her cowardice,
only hankered and refrained. Her malign egoism rises up uncontrolled,
and calls to its aid her quick and subtle intellect. She ruins the
other woman's happiness, but in doing so incurs a danger from which
her sense of personal dignity revolts. Life has no such charm for
her that she cares to purchase it at the cost of squalid humiliation
and self-contempt. The good and the bad in her alike impel her to
have done with it all; and a pistol-shot ends what is surely one of
the most poignant character-tragedies in literature. Ibsen's brain
never worked at higher pressure than in the conception and adjustment
of those "crowded hours" in which Hedda, tangled in the web of Will
and Circumstance, struggles on till she is too weary to struggle any
more.
It may not be superfluous to note that the "a" in "Gabler" should be
sounded long and full, like the "a" in "Garden"--NOT like the "a" in
"gable" or in "gabble."
W. A.
FOOTNOTES.
(1)Letters 214, 216, 217, 219.
(2)In the Ibsen volume of _Die Literatur_ (Berlin).
(3)Dr. Julius Elias (_Neue deutsche Rundschau_, December 1906, p. 1462)
makes the curious assertion that the character of Thea Elvsted was
in part borrowed from this "Gossensasser Hildetypus." It is hard to
see how even Gibes' ingenuity could distil from the same flower two
such different essences as Thea and Hilda.
(4)See article by Herman Bang in _Neue deutsche Rundschau_, December
Previous - next
