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30
IBSEN
prevent Peer Gynt from becoming a great
poem ;! after that he found himself on the
threshold of a world where everything mattered
too much in itself for its associations to be of
consequence. Attempting to analyse Ibsen's
characters used to be a pastime for fools ;
to-day, we all know that they
come from that
world where everything has been reduced to
an essence that defies analysis. There Ibsen
was never so completely at home as Cezanne ;
he lacked the imagination by which alone one
arrives and remains in the world of reality.
His vision was more uncertain and so his faith
was weaker. He was a less ferociously sincere
artist. When vision began to fail he took
refuge in a catalogue of facts or in unconvincing
into a
symbolism : Cezanne tossed his picture
bush. Perhaps that is why a new generation,
hungry for great contemporary art, turns more
hopefully to painting than to literature.
Thirty years ago it would have been misleading
to say, what is undoubtedly true, that
it is as an artist that Ibsen is
great. To call
a man a good artist came to much the same
thing as calling him a good ping-pong player :
it implied that he was proficient in his own
business ;
it did not imply that he was a great
man who affected life greatly. Therefore
many people who understood Ibsen and were
moved by his plays preferred to call him a