What else says the "Knappestöber" (The Button-moulder)? He answers Peer Gynt about as Mephistopheles, in Heiberg's "En Sjæl efter Döden" (A Soul After Death), replied to the "soul." Peer Gynt is not destined to be plunged into the brimstone pit; he is merely to be returned to the casting-ladle, that he may be moulded over again. He was no sinner, for, as the text declares, "der skal Kraft og Alvor til en Synd" (it requires power and earnestness to commit a sin), he belonged to the mediocre classes, and therefore, he "must be cast into the waste-box to be moulded over again."
According to Ibsen's conception, Peer Gynt is the typical expression of the national vices of the Norwegian people. It is very evident the poet was inspired with less horror than contempt by these vices.
This view of the matter explains even those of Ibsen's youthful works, in which his characteristics as an author are yet undeveloped. Margit, in "The Banquet at Solhaug," for instance, cannot help reminding the reader of the Ragnhild of Hertz. Yet the figure is moulded of quite different metal from that of Hertz; it is harder, less pliable, more tenacious. A woman of to-day, whose heart was filled with despairing love, would feel more akin to Ragnhild than to Margit; for Margit stands as a token to such a woman that she, the reader, is the child of an enfeebled age, devoid of either the courage or the consequence of passion, lost in half-measures. And wherefore does Ibsen, in his "Warriors of Helgeland," reach back to the wild tragedy, the magnificent horror, of the "Volsunga Saga"? In order that he may present this picture of the past to the contemplation of the present, in order to awe, in order to reproach the generation of to-day, by showing it the grandeur of its forefathers,—that passionate intensity which once unbridled, rushed madly onward toward its goal, looking neither to the right nor to the left, regardless of all minor considerations; that pride and strength which is chary of words, which silently acts, silently suffers, silently dies; those wills of iron; those hearts of gold; those deeds which a thousand years have not buried in oblivion. Aye, behold yourselves in the mirror!
Take this combative pathos in its first outburst,—it is his "Catiline" conceived with the entire sympathy of an enthusiastic university student. Catiline despises and hates the Roman social life, in which violence and selfishness hold sway; where men become rulers through intrigue and strategy; and he, the single individual, rebels against society. Take this combative pathos in one of Ibsen's later works, in the most admirable of his dramas, "Et Dukkehjem" (A Model Home), where it rings with a subdued, but none the less penetrating tone from female lips. Where Nora, the singing-bird, the squirrel, the child, finally collects herself and says, "I must try to find out which is right: society, or myself"; where this frail creature dares place herself on one side and all society on the other, we feel plainly that she is a true daughter of Ibsen. Take, finally, the pathos, so filled with thirst for battle, in a later work, "Gjengangere" (Apparitions), in Mrs. Alving's words concerning the teachings of modern official society, as follows: "I only intended to meddle with a single knot, but when that was untied, everything fell to pieces. And then I became aware that I was handling machine sewing." In these words, remote though the poet may be from the heroine of the play, may be heard a sigh of relief, that for once, if only indirectly, utterance has been given to the utmost that could be said.
With Catiline and with Mrs. Alving,—Ibsen's first male and last prominent female creation,—there is the same sense of isolation as in the intermediate characters, Falk, Brand, and Nora, and the same despairing beating of the head against a stone wall. In his drama "En Folkefiende" (An Enemy of the People), the entire plot revolves about the one idea of how much strength there lies in isolation, and the play ends with the didactically expressed paradox,—"The fact is, you see, the strongest man in the world is he who stands absolutely alone."
The current name in modern Europe for this mode of regarding the world and humanity is pessimism. There are, however, many kinds and degrees of pessimism. It may be, as with Schopenhauer and von Hartmann, a grave conviction that life itself is an evil, that the sum of joys is overwhelmingly insignificant in comparison with the sum of griefs and torments a human life contains; it may content itself by proving the worthlessness of life's highest good, showing how melancholy is youth, how joyless labor, how empty pleasure is in itself, and how repetition dulls our satisfaction in it. By virtue of this insight, it may either recommend self-denial, as did Schopenhauer, or labor for the advancement of civilization as does Hartmann, yet with the unwavering conviction that every advance in civilization bears with it increasing unhappiness for the human race. Such pessimism is not that of Ibsen. He too finds the world base, but the question whether life is a good does not occupy him. His entire mode of contemplation is moral.
The pessimistic philosopher is prone to linger on the illusory nature of love; he demonstrates how small an amount of happiness it affords; how it rests mainly on a delusion, as its true goal is not the happiness of the individual, but the greatest possible perfection of the coming generation. To Ibsen, the comedy of love does not consist in the unavoidable erotic illusion,—this alone is in his eyes uplifted above the province of comedy and has his full sympathy,—but in the deterioration of character, the abandonment of life ideals, that is the result of conventional engagements and marriages, even though based originally on love. That the young theologian, with his preparation for a missionary's career, should be transformed on his betrothal into an instructor in a young ladies' seminary, is an occasion for satire to Ibsen, is the true comedy of love in his eyes. In a single instance, and then but as though illumined by a passing flash of light, has he risen far above his usual moral conception of the erotic sphere, without, therefore, renouncing the satirical standpoint, and that is in the poem "Forviklinger" (Entanglements), the wittiest, as well as the most profound of all Ibsen's poems.
The pessimistic philosopher is prone to dwell on the thought that happiness is as unattainable for the individual as for the masses. He lays great stress on the fact that enjoyment slips through our fingers, that all our heart's desires are attained too late, and that when we have them within our grasp they are far from producing the effect upon us our craving for them had deluded us into anticipating. In such an utterance as the well-known remark of Goethe that in seventy-five years he had not enjoyed four weeks of actual pleasure, but had ever been compelled to roll a stone which must continually be raised and started afresh, he sees the decisive proof of the impossibility of happiness. For what the favorite of gods and men, Goethe, failed to obtain, is not likely to be gained by any ordinary mortal. This is not so with Ibsen. Sceptical as he may otherwise be, he by no means doubts the possibility of happiness. Even Mrs. Alving, hard-pressed as she was by circumstances, believes that under other conditions she might have been happy; aye, is truly of the opinion that even her wretched husband might have been prosperous. And Ibsen apparently shares her opinion. Her words about the "half great city," which has no joy to offer, only pleasures; no life vocation, only an office; no actual work, only business affairs, are spoken from his own heart. Life itself does not seem an evil to him. Existence itself is not joyless. Nay, some one is to blame, or rather many are guilty when a life is shorn of joy; and he points to the dreary, conventional society in Norway, rude in its pleasures, bigoted in its conceptions of duty, as the sole object of censure.
To the pessimistic philosopher, optimism is a sort of materialism. In the fact that optimism is preached at every corner, he sees the cause of the social question threatening to become a firebrand to the whole world. According to his conception, the most important thing is to teach the masses they need expect nothing from the future; the pessimistic recognition of universal suffering alone can explain to them the fruitlessness of their efforts. This mode of contemplation is never found in Ibsen. Where he touches the social question, as in "Samfundets Stötter" (The Pillars of Society), and elsewhere, the evil designated is always of a moral nature. Every injury sustained is dependent on a wrong committed. It is the entire stratum of society that is rotten, whole rows of pillars of society that are decaying and hollow. The stifling air of a small community is bad; in large communities there is room for "great deeds." A breath from the outside world, that is to say, a breath of the spirit of truth and freedom, can purify the atmosphere.
Thus it is that when Ibsen finds the world bad he feels no compassion for mankind, only indignation at it. His pessimism is not of a metaphysical but of a moral nature; it has its roots in a conviction of the possibility of the realization of the ideal; it is, in a word, an indignation-pessimism. And his lack of sympathy with many sufferings is dependent on his firm belief in the educating power of suffering. These petty, narrow human beings can only become large through suffering. These small, wretched communities can only become healthy through struggles, defeats, castigations. He who has himself felt how mightily a human being may be equipped by adversity, he who has himself drained the health-giving, tonic draught of bitterness, believes in the use of pain, of adversity, and of oppression. This is perhaps most plainly visible in his "Kejser og Galilæer" (Emperor and Galilean). His conception of Julian is that of a man who, through his persecution of his Christian subjects, becomes the actual framer of the Christianity of his time; that is to say, its resuscitator from the dead. Julian's universal historical significance for Ibsen is this: by transforming Christianity from a court and state religion to a persecuted and oppressed belief, he restored to it its original spiritual character and its primitive martyrdom. Challenged by the Christians, Julian punishes with severity; but the result of his persecutions is one he himself has little anticipated. The old comrades of his student days, that Gregor who lacked courage for any decisive act, but who had "his little circle, his kinsfolk to protect," and who had neither powder nor ability to effect more, and that Basilios who "sought for worldly wisdom in his country estate,"—both rise up, strengthened by persecution, like lions, against him.