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IBSEN i WAS it chance made Mr. Ellis Roberts mention June 1912 C zanne on the fourth page of a book about Ibsen ? One cannot think so. Similarities in the work and circumstances of the two men can hardly have escaped him. Born within a dozen years of each other (Ibsen was born in 1828), both matured in a period when the professions of writing and painting were laboriously cultivated at the expense of art. Each, unguided except by his own sense of dissatisfaction with his surroundings, found a way through the sloughs of romance and the deserts of realism, to the high country beyond them. Both sought and both found the same thing the thing above literature and painting, the stuff out of which great literature and painting are made. The Romantics and Realists were like to cuffs about which is the more people coming important thing in an orange, the history of Spain or the number of pips. The instinct of 1 " Henrik Ibsen: a Critical Study." By R. Ellis Roberts. (Seeker.) 28
IBSEN 29 the romantic, invited to say what he felt about anything, was to recall its associations. A rose made him think of quaint gardens and gracious ladies and Edmund Waller and sundials, and a thousand pleasant things that, at one time or another, had befallen him or some one else. A rose touched life at a hundred pretty points. A rose was interesting because it had a past. On this the realist's comment was " Mush ! " or words to that effect. In like predicament, he would give a detailed account of the properties of Rosa setigera, not forgetting to mention the urnshaped calyx-tube, the five imbricated lobes, or the open corolla of five obovate petals. To an Ibsen or a Cezanne one account would appear as irrelevant as the other, since both omitted the thing that mattered, what philo- sophers used to call " the thing in itself," what now they would call " the essential reality " : SOLNESS. ... Do you read much ? HILDA. No, never ! I have given it up. For it all seems so irrelevant. SOLNESS. That is just my feeling. It was just what the books left out that Ibsen wanted to express. He soon worked through the romantic tradition. It hampered him long enough to
- Page 2: LIBRARY of CALIFORNIA MHDtC0 LMMvct
- Page 9 and 10: POT-BOILERS BT CLIVE BELL T LONDON
- Page 11 and 12: CONTENTS PAGE FOREWORD i MONTAIGNE
- Page 13 and 14: FOREWORD DEAR GEOFFREY WHITWORTH, C
- Page 15 and 16: FOREWORD 3 Naturally, by so obligin
- Page 17 and 18: FOREWORD 5 I have said that the edi
- Page 19 and 20: FOREWORD 7 I write more fluently no
- Page 21 and 22: FOREWORD 9 amiss with Mr. Bennett's
- Page 23 and 24: FOREWORD ii is bound to turn the be
- Page 25 and 26: FOREWORD 13 " La Princesse de Cleve
- Page 27 and 28: FOREWORD 15 Mr. Bennett is not so w
- Page 29 and 30: MONTAIGNE IN FACSIMILE 1 LET it be
- Page 31 and 32: MONTAIGNE 19 Montaigne was thorough
- Page 33 and 34: MONTAIGNE 21 by, his subject, but,
- Page 35 and 36: MONTAIGNE 23 moral code and the met
- Page 37 and 38: MONTAIGNE 25 Indeed, this admiratio
- Page 39: MONTAIGNE 27 not inappropriate, the
- Page 43 and 44: IBSEN 31 political thinker or a soc
- Page 45 and 46: IBSEN 33 greatness of Ibsen's art t
- Page 47 and 48: IBSEN 35 or his life to the ideal,
- Page 49 and 50: IBSEN 37 Ibsen's social and politic
- Page 51 and 52: IBSEN 39 tolerate. Men long for the
- Page 53 and 54: MISS COLERIDGE i THE greatest art i
- Page 55 and 56: MISS COLERIDGE 43 without demur tha
- Page 57 and 58: MISS COLERIDGE 45 Here is the first
- Page 59 and 60: MISS COLERIDGE 47 a shrinking fasti
- Page 61 and 62: MISS COLERIDGE 49 picture. Her life
- Page 63 and 64: PEACOCK 51 are as amateurish as the
- Page 65 and 66: PEACOCK 53 was folly, who judged ev
- Page 67 and 68: PEACOCK 55 century living in the ni
- Page 69 and 70: PEACOCK 57 the Conservative party ;
- Page 71 and 72: PEACOCK 59 Peacock's attitude towar
- Page 73 and 74: PEACOCK 61 curiosity and ; just as
- Page 75 and 76: PEACOCK 63 A letter to Hookham, dat
- Page 77 and 78: PEACOCK 65 who claims attention for
- Page 79 and 80: PEACOCK 67 His epitaph I wrote, as
- Page 81 and 82: PEACOCK 69 his relations with Shell
- Page 83 and 84: PEACOCK 71 most entertaining, and p
- Page 85 and 86: PEACOCK 73 sionately pursued imposs
- Page 87 and 88: BOSWELL'S LETTERS 75 they created a
- Page 89 and 90: BOSWELL'S LETTERS 77 the sheer trut
IBSEN 29<br />
the romantic, invited to say what he felt<br />
about anything, was to recall its associations.<br />
A rose made him think of quaint gardens and<br />
gracious ladies and Edmund Waller and<br />
sundials, and a thousand pleasant things that,<br />
at one time or another, had befallen him or<br />
some one else. A rose touched life at a<br />
hundred pretty points. A rose was interesting<br />
because it had a past. On this the realist's<br />
comment was " Mush !<br />
" or words to that<br />
effect. In like predicament, he would give a<br />
detailed account of the properties of Rosa<br />
setigera, not forgetting to mention the urnshaped<br />
calyx-tube, the five imbricated lobes,<br />
or the open corolla of five obovate petals.<br />
To an Ibsen or a Cezanne one account would<br />
appear as irrelevant as the other, since both<br />
omitted the thing that mattered, what philo-<br />
sophers used to call " the thing in itself,"<br />
what now they would call " the essential<br />
reality<br />
" :<br />
SOLNESS. ... Do you read much ?<br />
HILDA. No, never ! I have given it up. For it<br />
all seems so irrelevant.<br />
SOLNESS. That is just my feeling.<br />
It was just what the books left out that Ibsen<br />
wanted to express.<br />
He soon worked through the romantic<br />
tradition. It hampered him long enough to
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