Horror in Burma; disaster in China; financial crash looming and rain in Catalonia.
What was my response on a Sunday morning when it was dry enough and warm enough (just) to sit out on the balcony and drink tea?
Why, there is only one thing to do when the rest of the world is depressing: find something even more depressing to read. I do not have Larkin’s collected letters so I turned to Ibsen instead!
I chose one of the more obscure plays by Ibsen – though it has to be said that ‘obscure’ when applied to Ibsen becomes something of a relative term, perhaps ‘The Vikings at Heligoland’ might qualify. Anyway, the one I chose to read was ‘Rosmersholm.’
I last read it over a quarter of a century ago.
That’s the sort of statement that you never think about writing until it slips into your typing and it causes you to pause a while and think!
When I first read Ibsen he seemed to me to combine the readability of Priestly with the profundity and social comment of ‘The Wednesday Play.’ And I suppose that you have to be my age to follow the reasoning behind that statement. I loved Ibsen. You could read him and understand what was going on and feel that you were reading something of importance of (more of a seventies word) relevance.
This time round it was different. I remembered the small town tensions, the opposition of radical and progressive (whatever that meant in a small Norwegian town in 1886) the interesting if confusing morality and the ending.
This time round I found the read just as easy, the situation quintessentially Ibsonian but this time I found more complexity than previously. The layers of complexity in the moral situations were beautifully suggested and easy assumptions were impossible.
The ending is superficially heroic with a double suicide after a spiritual wedding, but the way that it is written it becomes more of a metaphysical existential statement: which is impossible. Therefore the ending is nothing of the sort, and the last words of the play mouthed by a credulous housekeeper. Death is very permanent. And no way to end a play.
I thoroughly enjoyed it.
And I wrote the first draft of the links for the drama group for the summer concert.
What a varied life I do lead.
What was my response on a Sunday morning when it was dry enough and warm enough (just) to sit out on the balcony and drink tea?
Why, there is only one thing to do when the rest of the world is depressing: find something even more depressing to read. I do not have Larkin’s collected letters so I turned to Ibsen instead!
I chose one of the more obscure plays by Ibsen – though it has to be said that ‘obscure’ when applied to Ibsen becomes something of a relative term, perhaps ‘The Vikings at Heligoland’ might qualify. Anyway, the one I chose to read was ‘Rosmersholm.’
I last read it over a quarter of a century ago.
That’s the sort of statement that you never think about writing until it slips into your typing and it causes you to pause a while and think!
When I first read Ibsen he seemed to me to combine the readability of Priestly with the profundity and social comment of ‘The Wednesday Play.’ And I suppose that you have to be my age to follow the reasoning behind that statement. I loved Ibsen. You could read him and understand what was going on and feel that you were reading something of importance of (more of a seventies word) relevance.
This time round it was different. I remembered the small town tensions, the opposition of radical and progressive (whatever that meant in a small Norwegian town in 1886) the interesting if confusing morality and the ending.
This time round I found the read just as easy, the situation quintessentially Ibsonian but this time I found more complexity than previously. The layers of complexity in the moral situations were beautifully suggested and easy assumptions were impossible.
The ending is superficially heroic with a double suicide after a spiritual wedding, but the way that it is written it becomes more of a metaphysical existential statement: which is impossible. Therefore the ending is nothing of the sort, and the last words of the play mouthed by a credulous housekeeper. Death is very permanent. And no way to end a play.
I thoroughly enjoyed it.
And I wrote the first draft of the links for the drama group for the summer concert.
What a varied life I do lead.
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