Hedda Gabler
Ibsen, Henrik, 1828-1906
English
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Below is a summary of Hedda Gabler
This Etext was produced by Douglas Levy.
For Nikki.
HEDDA GABLER
By Henrik Ibsen
Translated by Edmund Gosse and William Archer
Introduction by William Archer
INTRODUCTION.
From Munich, on June 29, 1890, Ibsen wrote to the Swedish poet, Count
Carl Soilsky: "Our intention has all along been to spend the summer
in the Tyrol again. But circumstances are against our doing so. I
am at present engaged upon a new dramatic work, which for several
reasons has made very slow progress, and I do not leave Munich until
I can take with me the completed first draft. There is little or no
prospect of my being able to complete it in July." Ibsen did not
leave Munich at all that season. On October 30 he wrote: "At present
I am utterly engrossed in a new play. Not one leisure hour have I
had for several months." Three weeks later (November 20) he wrote
to his French translator, Count Prozor: "My new play is finished; the
manuscript went off to Copenhagen the day before yesterday. . . . It
produces a curious feeling of emptiness to be thus suddenly separated
from a work which has occupied one's time and thoughts for several
months, to the exclusion of all else. But it is a good thing, too,
to have done with it. The constant intercourse with the fictitious
personages was beginning to make me quite nervous." To the same
correspondent he wrote on December 4: "The title of the play is
_Hedda Gabler_. My intention in giving it this name was to indicate
that Hedda, as a personality, is to be regarded rather as her father's
daughter than as her husband's wife. It was not my desire to deal in
this play with so-called problems. What I principally wanted to do
was to depict human beings, human emotions, and human destinies, upon
a groundwork of certain of the social conditions and principles of
the present day."
So far we read the history of the play in the official
"Correspondence."(1) Some interesting glimpses into the poet's moods
during the period between the completion of _The Lady from the Sea_
and the publication of _Hedda Gabler_ are to be found in the series
of letters to Fraulein Emilie Bardach, of Vienna, published by Dr.
George Brandes.(2) This young lady Ibsen met at Gossensass in the
Tyrol in the autumn of 1889. The record of their brief friendship
belongs to the history of _The Master Builder_ rather than to that of
_Hedda Gabler_, but the allusions to his work in his letters to her
during the winter of 1889 demand some examination.
So early as October 7, 1889, he writes to her: "A new poem begins to
dawn in me. I will execute it this winter, and try to transfer to it
the bright atmosphere of the summer. But I feel that it will end in
sadness--such is my nature." Was this "dawning" poem _Hedda Gabler_?
Or was it rather _The Master Builder_ that was germinating in his
mind? Who shall say? The latter hypothesis seems the more probable,
for it is hard to believe that at any stage in the incubation of
_Hedda Gabler_ he can have conceived it as even beginning in gaiety.
A week later, however, he appears to have made up his mind that the
time had not come for the poetic utilisation of his recent experiences.
He writes on October 15: "Here I sit as usual at my writing-table.
Now I would fain work, but am unable to. My fancy, indeed, is very
active. But it always wanders awayours. I cannot repress my summer
memories--nor do I wish to. I live through my experience again and
again and yet again. To transmute it all into a poem, I find, in the
meantime, impossible." Clearly, then, he felt that his imagination
ought to have been engaged on some theme having no relation to his
summer experiences--the theme, no doubt, of _Hedda Gabler_. In his
next letter, dated October 29, he writes: "Do not be troubled because
I cannot, in the meantime, create (_dichten_). In reality I am for
ever creating, or, at any rate, dreaming of something which, when in
the fulness of time it ripens, will reveal itself as a creation
(_Dichtung_)." On November 19 he says: "I am very busily occupied
with preparations for my new poem. I sit almost the whole day at my
writing-table. Go out only in the evening for a little while." The
five following letters contain no allusion to the play; but on
September 18, 1890, he wrote: "My wife and son are at present at
Riva, on the Lake of Garda, and will probably remain there until the
middle of October, or even longer. Thus I am quite alone here, and
cannot get away. The new play on which I am at present engaged will
probably not be ready until November, though I sit at my writing-
table daily, and almost the whole day long."
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