Hedda. A relief to know that it is still possible for an act of voluntary courage to take place in the world. Something over which there falls a veil of unintentional beauty.... And then now—the great act! That over which the sense of beauty falls!
The ‘vine-leaves in the hair,’ in the same piece, belongs with equal exactness to this category of words, amounting to an obsession. The use of expressions full of mystery, incomprehensible to the hearer, and either freely coined by the speaker, or endowed by him with a peculiar sense, deviating from that usually assigned them in speech, is one of the most frequent phenomena among the mentally deranged. Griesinger[349] often lays stress on this, and A. Marie[350] adduces some characteristic examples of words and phrases, either newly invented or employed in a sense differing from the customary one, which have been repeated by the insane.
Ibsen is certainly not wholly diseased in mind, but only a dweller on the borderland—a ‘mattoid.’ His use of formalized expressions does not therefore go so far as the invention of new words, as cited by Dr. Marie. But that he ascribes a mysterious meaning to the expressions ‘beauty,’ ‘joy of life,’ ‘courage of life,’ etc., and one which they do not possess when rationally used, follows clearly enough from the examples quoted.
Finally let us adduce a few specimens of sheer nonsense, corresponding to conversations held in dreams, and the silly rambling speech of persons suffering from fever or acute mania. In The Lady from the Sea, Ellida says (p. 39): ‘The water in the fjord here is sick, ... yes, sick. And I believe it makes one sick, too’ (p. 79). ‘We’ (Ellida and the ‘stranger’) ‘spoke of the gulls and the eagles, and all the other sea-birds. I think—isn’t it wonderful?—when we talked of such things it seemed to me as if both the sea-beasts and sea-birds were one with him.... I almost thought I belonged to them all, too’ (p. 100).
I don’t think the dry land is really our home.... I think that if only men had from the beginning accustomed themselves to live on the sea, or in the sea, perhaps, we should be more perfect than we are—with better and happier....
Arnholm (jestingly). Well, perhaps! But it can’t be helped. We’ve once for all entered upon the wrong path, and have become land-beasts instead of sea-beasts. Anyhow, I suppose it’s too late to make good the mistake now.
Ellida. Yes, you’ve spoken a sad truth. And I think men instinctively feel something of this themselves. And they bear it about with them as a secret regret and sorrow. Believe me, herein lies the deepest cause for the sadness of men.
And Dr. Wangel, who is depicted as a rational man, says (p. 129):
And then she is so changeable, so capricious—she varies so suddenly.
Arnholm. No doubt that is the result of her morbid state of mind.