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Den smilende Ibsen: Henrik Ibsens forfatterskap—stykkevis og delt by Ståle Dingstad

2014; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 86; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/scd.2014.0044

2163-8195

Olivia Noble Gunn,

Cultural Studies and Interdisciplinary Research

Reviewed by: Den smilende Ibsen: Henrik Ibsens forfatterskap—stykkevis og deltby Ståle Dingstad Olivia Gunn Ståle Dingstad. Den smilende Ibsen: Henrik Ibsens forfatterskap—stykkevis og delt. Akta Ibseniana. Centre for Ibsen Studies. Oslo: Akademiska forlag, 2013. Pp. 297. Ståle Dingstad’s Den smilende Ibsen: Henrik Ibsens forfatterskap—stykkevis og delt(The Smiling Ibsen: Henrik Ibsen’s Authorship—Piece by Piece and Divided) is a serious book pivoting on a serious assertion regarding scholarly method: when we give source materials their proper due, we will arrive at an understanding of Henrik Ibsen that is truer because it is less serious: “Alt vi vet om Ibsens liv og virksomhet, hans arbeid og økonomi, gir grunnlag for å fremstille livet hans som en eneste lang suksess” (p. 36) [Everything we know about Ibsen’s life and activity, his work and economy, gives grounds for representing his life as one long success story]. In other words, when we return to the archive, we will recover a version of Ibsen that emphasizes support and humor, understanding and laughter over “det store alvoret” (p. 10) [the great seriousness]. “Det er komediene” [It’s the comedies], Dingstad insists, “som legger grunnen for Ibsens ry som samtidsdramatiker” (p. 215) [that lay the groundwork for Ibsen’s reputation as a contemporary dramatist]. Dingstad’s critique of contemporary Ibsen scholarship is striking and warrants careful consideration—at the very least because it asks scholars to begin resisting certain established “truths”: Etter min oppfatning har man laget et skrekkabinett av Ibsens dramaskikkelser der de i tur og orden fremstår som ekstreme personligheter med monomane holdninger som vel kan fremme det dramatiske, men som i mindre grad fremmer dialog og forståelse, eller den forløsende latteren. (p. 14) (As I understand it, one has made a cabinet of horrors out of Ibsen’s dramatic characters, where they appear in turn as extreme personalities with monomaniacal opinions, which can certainly bring out the dramatic, but to a lesser degree advances dialogue and understanding, or freeing laughter.) However, Den smilende Ibsenis not a book full of revisionary close-readings whose aim is to dismantle the “skrekkabinett.” As the subtitle of the book (a reference to Brand) suggests, Dingstad chooses to “holde seg på overflaten” (p. 23) [keep to the surface] or to look at “Ibsens forfatterskap, nær sagt i alle varianter” (p. 10) [Ibsen’s authorship in [End Page 473]nearly all its variations]—a breadth of approach that he regards as necessary for setting up his final chapter, “Den smilende Ibsen,” and further scholarship on the comedic in Ibsen’s contemporary dramas. Thus, the first four chapters assert Ludvig Holberg’s central influence on Ibsen as moralist and humorist; make note of some of the clever, affirmative, and comedic aspects of Ibsen’s life and texts—found in journalism, correspondence, poetry; offer corrections to certain errors made in previous scholarship (a misattributed letter, an overemphasis on Georg Brandes’s significance for Ibsen’s modern breakthrough, etc.); and glance repeatedly at questions of method, or at the possibilities and limits of archival research and hermeneutical analysis. Taken together, “lærdommen kan gjerne generaliseres og oppsummeres: ad fontes, eller gå til kildene!” (p. 105) [the lesson can certainly be generalized and summed up: ad fontes, or go to the sources!]. First and foremost, Den smilende Ibsenis a much-needed rejection of the Ibsen life-myth—“myten om den ensomme mislykkede og landsforviste Ibsen” (p. 13) [the myth of the lonely, unsuccessful, and exiled Ibsen]—a myth that is repeated again and again in Ibsen scholarship, hardening and darkening with the years until it has become a mere tick masquerading as the obligatory “historical groundwork” that permits ahistorical close-readings, “som … krydder til den etterfølgende kosten”(p. 40) [like … spice for the fare that follows]. Thus, as Dingstad himself asserts, his book is an excellent “supplement” to the standard biographies (p. 57), such as Michael Meyer’s Ibsen: A Biography(Doubleday, 1971). It also constitutes a critique of contemporary biographical work on Ibsen, which might give in all too easily to the notion that myths are all we have. In particular, Dingstad takes recent biographer Ivo de...