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32
IBSEN
situations from Ibsen's plays.
Ibsen's method
is the true artist's method. The realist
writing about people tends to give an inventory
of personal peculiarities, and a faithful
report of all that is said and done. The
romantic hopes, somehow, to " create an
atmosphere " by suggesting what he once felt
for something not altogether unlike the matter
in hand. Ibsen sets himself to discover the
halfpennyworth of significance in all this
intolerable deal of irrelevance. Which is the
word, which the gesture, that, springing
directly from the depths of one character,
penetrates to the depths of another ? What
is the true cause of this hubbub of inconsequent
words and contradictory actions ? Nothing
less remote than the true cause will serve,
nothing else is firmly rooted in reality.
Is
that man expressing what he feels or is he
paying out what he thinks he is expected to
feel ? Have I pushed simplification as far as
it will go ? Are there no trappings, no over-
tones, nothing but what is essential to express
my vision of reality ? And, above all, is my
vision absolutely sharp and sure ? These
were the questions Ibsen had to answer.
When he succeeded he was a great artist, not,
as Mr. Roberts suggests, in the manner of
Shakespeare, but in the manner of ^Eschylus.
There is no more obvious proof of the