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175-413: Anton Pavlovich Chekhov ( / ˈ tʃ ɛ k ɒ f / ; Russian: Антон Павлович Чехов , IPA: [ɐnˈton ˈpavləvʲɪtɕ ˈtɕexəf] ; 29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg , Chekhov

350-476: A burgher of Bergen in Norway in 1726. Henrik Ibsen had Danish, German, Norwegian, and some distant Scottish ancestry. Most of his ancestors belonged to the merchant class of original Danish and German extraction, and many of his ancestors were ship's captains. Ibsen's biographer Henrik Jæger famously wrote in 1888 that Ibsen did not have a drop of Norwegian blood in his veins, stating that "the ancestral Ibsen

525-681: A "revolution" that has debunked numerous myths previously taken for granted. Older Ibsen historiography has often claimed that Knud Ibsen experienced financial ruin and became an alcoholic tyrant, that the family lost contact with the elite it had belonged to, and that this had a strong influence on Henrik Ibsen's biography and work. Newer Ibsen scholarship—in particular Jon Nygaard 's book on Ibsen's wider social milieu and ancestry and Jørgen Haave 's book The Ibsen Family ( Familien Ibsen )—has refuted such claims, and Haave has pointed out that older biographical works have uncritically repeated numerous unfounded myths about both of Ibsen's parents, and about

700-610: A census. The letters Chekhov wrote during the two-and-a-half-month journey to Sakhalin are considered to be among his best. His remarks to his sister about Tomsk were to become notorious. Tomsk is a very dull town. To judge from the drunkards whose acquaintance I have made, and from the intellectual people who have come to the hotel to pay their respects to me, the inhabitants are very dull, too. Chekhov witnessed much on Sakhalin that shocked and angered him, including floggings, embezzlement of supplies, and forced prostitution of women. He wrote, "There were times I felt that I saw before me

875-423: A challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a "theatre of mood" and a "submerged life in the text." The plays that Chekhov wrote were not complex, but easy to follow, and created a somewhat haunting atmosphere for the audience. Chekhov began writing stories to earn money, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations that influenced

1050-432: A constant occurrence at our spacious farmhouse and especially around Christmastime and the market days, our townhouse was full and the table was set from morning to nightfall. Haave writes that the sources who knew Henrik in childhood described him as "a boy who was pampered by his father, who enjoyed being creative in solitude, and who provoked peers with his superiority and arrogance." Henrik engaged in model theater, which

1225-595: A debtor will actually be prosecuted varies from state to state. This modern use of the term debtors' prison arguably has its start with precedent rulings in 1970, 1971 and 1983 by the U.S. Supreme Court, and passage of the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978 . In 1970, the Court ruled in Williams v. Illinois that extending a maximum prison term because a person is too poor to pay fines or court costs violates

1400-593: A disappointment with the Commune, insofar as it did not go far enough in its anarchism in its rejection of the state and private property. Ibsen wrote, "Is it not impudent of the commune in Paris to go and destroy my admirable state theory, or rather no state theory? The idea is now ruined for a long time to come, and I cannot even set it forth in verse with any propriety." However, Ibsen nevertheless expressed an optimism, asserting that his "no state theory" bears "within itself

1575-482: A doodle. At the time when Ibsen was writing, literature was emerging as a formidable force in 19th century society. With the vast increase in literacy towards the end of the century, the possibilities of literature being used for subversion struck horror into the heart of the Establishment. Ibsen's plays, from A Doll's House onwards, caused an uproar—not just in Norway, but throughout Europe, and even across

1750-785: A failure to pay a fine without first inquiring into a person's ability to pay and considering whether there are adequate alternatives to imprisonment. A year-long study released in 2010 of fifteen states with the highest prison populations by the Brennan Center for Justice , found that all fifteen states sampled have jurisdictions that arrest people for failing to pay debt or appear at debt-related hearings. The study identified four causes that lead to debtors' prison type arrests for debts: In an article in The American Conservative , Michael Shindler argues that another factor responsible for debtors' prison type arrests

1925-693: A healthy core" and that some day "it will be practised without any caricature." Plays entirely or partly in verse are marked . Major translation projects include: Ibsen was decorated Knight in 1873, Commander in 1892, and with the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Olav in 1893. He received the Grand Cross of the Danish Order of the Dannebrog , and the Grand Cross of the Swedish Order of

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2100-467: A hero of the new order, rising from a modest background so as eventually to possess the gentry's estates. Despite Chekhov's reputation as a playwright, William Boyd asserts that his short stories represent the greater achievement. Raymond Carver , who wrote the short story "Errand" about Chekhov's death, believed that Chekhov was the greatest of all short story writers: Chekhov's stories are as wonderful (and necessary) now as when they first appeared. It

2275-449: A judge when people refuse to (appear as) witness, or don't pay off their fines or debts. The imprisonment does not cancel the due amount and interest. In England during the 18th and 19th centuries, 10,000 people were imprisoned for debt each year. A prison term did not alleviate a person's debt, however; an inmate was typically required to repay the creditor in-full before being released. In England and Wales , debtors' prisons varied in

2450-405: A long time since I drank champagne.' He drained it and lay quietly on his left side, and I just had time to run to him and lean across the bed and call to him, but he had stopped breathing and was sleeping peacefully as a child ... Chekhov's body was transported to Moscow in a refrigerated railway-car meant for oysters , a detail that offended Gorky . Some of the thousands of mourners followed

2625-600: A member of the Danish ancient noble Bille family; their son was Danish actor Joen Bille . Ibsen had an illegitimate child early in his life, not entitled to the family name or inheritance. This line ended with his biological grandchildren. In a letter to George Brandes shortly before the Paris Commune , Ibsen expressed anarchist views that Brandes later positively related to the Paris Commune. Ibsen wrote that

2800-454: A more serious, artistic ambition in the twenty-six-year-old. In 1888, with a little string-pulling by Grigorovich, the short story collection At Dusk ( V Sumerkakh ) won Chekhov the coveted Pushkin Prize "for the best literary production distinguished by high artistic worth." In 1887, exhausted from overwork and ill health, Chekhov took a trip to Ukraine, which reawakened him to the beauty of

2975-458: A permanent family name , in the 17th century. The phenomenon of patronymics becoming frozen started in the 17th century in bourgeois families in Denmark, and the practice was only widely adopted in Norway from around 1900. From his marriage with Suzannah Thoresen , Ibsen had one son, lawyer, government minister, and Norwegian Prime Minister Sigurd Ibsen . Sigurd Ibsen married Bergljot Bjørnson,

3150-525: A person and artist in a dialogue with Danish theater and literature that was anything but smooth." On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Ibsen's death in 2006, the Norwegian government organised the Ibsen Year , which included celebrations around the world. The NRK produced a miniseries on Ibsen's childhood and youth in 2006, An Immortal Man . Several prizes are awarded in his name, among them

3325-410: A person's identity, but had different rules than criminal trials. It was more similar to the modern enforcement of sentences ( Strafvollzug ) e.g. the debtor would be able to work off their debt for a certain number of days, graduated by how much they owed. The North German Confederation eliminated debtors' prisons on May 29, 1868. In Dutch law gijzeling (lit.: take in as hostage) can be ordered by

3500-459: A priest and a merchant. "The Steppe" has been called a "dictionary of Chekhov's poetics", and it represented a significant advance for Chekhov, exhibiting much of the quality of his mature fiction and winning him publication in a literary journal rather than a newspaper. In autumn 1887, a theatre manager named Korsh commissioned Chekhov to write a play, the result being Ivanov , written in a fortnight and produced that November. Though Chekhov found

3675-506: A profound poetic dramatist, he is widely regarded as the most important playwright since Shakespeare. Shaw claimed that the new naturalism of Ibsen's plays had made Shakespeare obsolete. Ibsen is commonly described as the most famous Norwegian internationally. Ibsen wrote his plays in Dano-Norwegian , and they were published by the Danish publisher Gyldendal . He was the father of Prime Minister Sigurd Ibsen . Henrik Johan Ibsen

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3850-429: A revolutionary backbone to what is common sense to the medium of acting to this day: an effort to recreate and express the realism of how people truly act and speak with each other. This realistic manifestation of the human condition may engender in audiences reflection upon what it means to be human. This philosophy of approaching the art of acting has stood not only steadfast, but as the cornerstone of acting for much of

4025-405: A rule that no definite proof is required to prove someone guilty of something but a set of proof, thus it’s only required that it’s likely someone is willfully not paying his fine rather than having to prove what exact money he does own (legally named revenues occultes ) , this can lead to someone insolvent being sentenced for being unable to pay his fine as soon as a small mismatch exists between

4200-553: A series of strokes in March 1900. When, on 22 May, his nurse assured a visitor that he was a little better, Ibsen spluttered his last words "On the contrary" ("Tvertimod!"). He died the following day at 2:30 pm. Ibsen was buried in Vår Frelsers gravlund ("The Graveyard of Our Savior") in central Oslo. The 100th anniversary of Ibsen's death in 2006 was commemorated with an "Ibsen year" in Norway and other countries. In 2006,

4375-533: A signatory to the Declaration of Independence , spent some time in a debtors' prison while still serving as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Fellow signatory Robert Morris spent three years, from 1798 to 1801, in the Prune Street Debtors' Prison, Philadelphia Henry Lee III, better known as Henry "Light-Horse" Lee , a Revolutionary War general and father of Robert E. Lee,

4550-430: A simple rejection of current conventions. Many modern readers, who might regard anti-Victorian didacticism as dated, simplistic or hackneyed, have found these later works to be of absorbing interest for their hard-edged, objective consideration of interpersonal confrontation. Hedda Gabler and A Doll's House are regularly cited as Ibsen's most popular and influential plays, with the title role of Hedda regarded as one of

4725-639: A single cell. The father of the English author Charles Dickens was sent to one of these prisons (the Marshalsea ), which were often described in Dickens's novels. He became an advocate for debt prison reform, and his novel Little Dorrit dealt directly with this issue. The Debtors' Act 1869 ( 32 & 33 Vict. c. 62) limited the ability of the courts to sentence debtors to prison, but it did not entirely prohibit them from doing so. Debtors who had

4900-465: A sister of his brother-in-law von Cappelen. Knud grew up at Rising with most of his many half-siblings, among them the later governor Christian Cornelius Paus and the shipowner Christopher Blom Paus . In the 1801 census the Paus family of Rising had seven servants. Marichen grew up in the stately Altenburggården in the center of Skien with her parents Hedevig Paus and Johan Andreas Altenburg . Altenburg

5075-549: A statue in marble of Ibsen for the Ibsen Museum in Oslo. Some other things named after Ibsen include: Debtor%27s prison Since the late 20th century, the term debtors' prison has also sometimes been applied by critics to criminal justice systems in which a court can sentence someone to prison over willfully unpaid criminal fees , usually following the order of a judge . For example, in some jurisdictions within

5250-418: A substantial number of indigent debtors are legally incarcerated for the crime of failing to appear at civil debt proceedings as ordered by a judge. In this case, the crime is not indigence, but disobeying the judge's order to appear before the court. Critics argue that the "willful" terminology is subject to individual mens rea determination by a judge, rather than statute, and that since this presents

5425-481: A wholly imaginary "invention", his wife is earning the household income. Ibsen displays masterly use of irony: despite his dogmatic insistence on truth, Gregers never says what he thinks but only insinuates, and is never understood until the play reaches its climax. Gregers hammers away at Hjalmar through innuendo and coded phrases until he realizes the truth: that Gina's daughter, Hedvig, is not his child. Blinded by Gregers' insistence on absolute truth, Hjalmar disavows

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5600-671: Is a correspondence that preserves gems of theatre history, including shared complaints about Stanislavski 's directing methods and Chekhov's advice to Olga about performing in his plays. In Yalta, Chekhov wrote one of his most famous stories, " The Lady with the Dog " (also translated from the Russian as "Lady with Lapdog"), which depicts what at first seems a casual liaison between a cynical married man and an unhappy married woman who meet while holidaying in Yalta . Neither expects anything lasting from

5775-411: Is a public bath. The doctor discovers that the water is contaminated by the local tannery . He expects to be acclaimed for saving the town from the nightmare of infecting visitors with disease, but instead he is declared an 'enemy of the people' by the locals, who band against him and even throw stones through his windows. The play ends with his complete ostracism. It is obvious to the reader that disaster

5950-539: Is a result of Norway being a wealthy country for a very long time. Haave points out that virtually all of Ibsen's ancestors had been wealthy burghers and higher government officials, and members of the local and regional elites in the areas they lived, often of continental European ancestry. He argues that "the Ibsen family belonged to an elite that distanced itself strongly from the common farmer population, and considered itself part of an educated European culture" and that "it

6125-401: Is a scathing criticism of the marital roles accepted by men and women which characterized Ibsen's society. Ibsen was already in his fifties when A Doll's House was published. He himself saw his latter plays as a series. At the end of his career, he described them as "that series of dramas which began with A Doll's House and which is now completed with When We Dead Awaken ". Furthermore, it

6300-751: Is in store for the town as well as for the doctor. As audiences by now expected, Ibsen's next play again attacked entrenched beliefs and assumptions; but this time, his attack was not against society's mores, but against overeager reformers and their idealism. Always an iconoclast, Ibsen saw himself as an objective observer of society, "like a lone franc tireur in the outposts", playing a lone hand, as he put it. Ibsen, perhaps more than any of his contemporaries, relied upon immediate sources such as newspapers and second-hand report for his contact with intellectual thought. He claimed to be ignorant of books, leaving them to his wife and son, but, as Georg Brandes described, "he seemed to stand in some mysterious correspondence with

6475-411: Is not only the immense number of stories he wrote—for few, if any, writers have ever done more—it is the awesome frequency with which he produced masterpieces, stories that shrive us as well as delight and move us, that lay bare our emotions in ways only true art can accomplish. According to literary critic Daniel S. Burt , Chekhov was one of the greatest and most influential writers of all time. One of

6650-743: Is often due to ignorance." In a 2019 report by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law argues that debtors' prisons are likely to appear in states like Arkansas where many people live in poverty and are unable to pay fines and fees, where poor record-keeping exacerbates challenges faced by defendants, and where arrest warrants and drivers license suspensions make it even harder for people to pay off court-imposed debt. In 2014, National Public Radio (NPR) reported that there were still cases of judges imprisoning people who have not paid court fees. The American Civil Liberties Union has been challenging such policies since 2009. In September, 2015, in

6825-624: Is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov was a physician by profession. "Medicine is my lawful wife," he once said, "and literature is my mistress." Chekhov renounced the theatre after the reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Konstantin Stanislavski 's Moscow Art Theatre , which subsequently also produced Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and premiered his last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard . These four works present

7000-511: Is similar to Chekhov's "Sleepy". The Russian critic D. S. Mirsky , who lived in England, explained Chekhov's popularity in that country by his "unusually complete rejection of what we may call the heroic values". In Russia itself, Chekhov's drama fell out of fashion after the revolution , but it was later incorporated into the Soviet canon. The character of Lopakhin, for example, was reinvented as

7175-462: Is that "Whereas indigent defendants have a Sixth Amendment right to a court-appointed lawyer in criminal cases involving incarceration, indigent debtors in state and local courts have no one to defend them against the error and abuse that characterizes debt collection litigation." Similarly, Shindler writes, regarding explicitly illegal debtors' prison type arrests ordered by local judges,"the reason these officials engage in this sort of excessive behavior

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7350-823: Is the story of the slow collapse of a patrician merchant family amid the emergence of a new democratic society in the 19th century, and that Henrik Ibsen, like others of his class, had to find new opportunities to maintain his social position. Nygaard summarized the revolution in the understanding of Ibsen's childhood and background as all the popular notions about Ibsen being wrong. Many Ibsen scholars have compared characters and themes in his plays to his family and upbringing; his themes often deal with issues of financial difficulty as well as moral conflicts stemming from dark secrets hidden from society. Ibsen himself confirmed that he both modeled and named characters in his plays after his own family. Works such as Peer Gynt , The Wild Duck , Rosmersholm , Hedda Gabler , An Enemy of

7525-610: Is with the Paus family that Henrik Ibsen has the most pronounced temperament traits in common." Referring to the Paus side of the family, Hedvig Ibsen remarked, "we belong to a silent family," playfully echoing the similarity between "taus" (silent) and "Paus." One of the Cudrio sisters from the neighboring farm, who knew Henrik Ibsen in childhood, said, "he was immensely cunning and malicious, and he even beat us. But when he grew up, he became incredibly handsome, yet no one liked him because he

7700-652: The Black Forest in Germany, from where he wrote outwardly jovial letters to his sister Masha, describing the food and surroundings, and assuring her and his mother that he was getting better. In his last letter, he complained about the way German women dressed. Chekhov died on 15 July 1904 at the age of 44 after a long fight with tuberculosis, the same disease that killed his brother. Chekhov's death has become one of "the great set pieces of literary history"—retold, embroidered, and fictionalized many times since, notably in

7875-812: The Chekhov Gymnasium ), where he was held back for a year at fifteen for failing an examination in Ancient Greek. He sang at the Greek Orthodox monastery in Taganrog and in his father's choirs. In a letter of 1892, he used the word "suffering" to describe his childhood and recalled: When my brothers and I used to stand in the middle of the church and sing the trio "May my prayer be exalted", or "The Archangel's Voice", everyone looked at us with emotion and envied our parents, but we at that moment felt like little convicts. In 1876, Chekhov's father

8050-713: The Coldbath Fields Prison , Fleet Prison , Giltspur Street Compter , King's Bench Prison , Marshalsea Prison , Poultry Compter , and Wood Street Counter . The most famous was the Clink prison , which had a debtor's entrance in Stoney Street. This prison gave rise to the British slang term for being incarcerated in any prison, hence "in the clink". Its location also gave rise to the term for being financially embarrassed, "stoney broke". Imprisonment for

8225-869: The International Ibsen Award , the Norwegian Ibsen Award , and the Ibsen Centennial Commemoration Award . Every year, since 2008, the annual "Delhi Ibsen Festival", is held in Delhi, India , organized by the Dramatic Art and Design Academy (DADA) in collaboration with The Royal Norwegian Embassy in India. It features plays by Ibsen, performed by artists from various parts of the world in varied languages and styles. The Ibsen Society of America (ISA)

8400-776: The Nobel Prize in Literature in 1902, 1903, and 1904. Ibsen's ancestry has been a much studied subject, due to both his perceived foreignness and the influence of his biography and family on his plays. Ibsen often made references to his family in his plays, sometimes by name, or by modelling characters after them. The oldest documented member of the Ibsen family was ship's captain Rasmus Ibsen (1632–1703) from Stege, Denmark . His son, ship's captain Peder Ibsen, became

8575-653: The Organization of American States . Article 7 (7) of the pact affirms "no one shall be detained for debt. This principle shall not limit the orders of a competent judicial authority issued for nonfulfillment of duties of support." Currently, 24 countries from the Western Hemisphere are parties to that treaty. In 1976 Article 11 of the ICCPR – International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – came into effect stating, "No one shall be imprisoned merely on

8750-531: The United States , people can be held in contempt of court and jailed after willful non-payment of child support , garnishments, confiscations, fines, or back taxes. Additionally, though properly served civil duties over private debts in nations such as the United States will merely result in a default judgment being rendered in absentia if the defendant willfully declines to appear by law,

8925-496: The state "is the curse of the individual.… The state must be abolished." Brandes related that Ibsen "presented to me as political ideals, conditions and ideas whose nature did not seem to me quite clear, but which were unquestionably akin to those that were proclaimed precisely one month later, in an extremely distorted form, by the Parisian commune." And in another letter shortly before the Commune came to an end, Ibsen expressed

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9100-500: The steppe . On his return, he began the novella-length short story " The Steppe ", which he called "something rather odd and much too original", and which was eventually published in Severny Vestnik ( The Northern Herald ). In a narrative that drifts with the thought processes of the characters, Chekhov evokes a chaise journey across the steppe through the eyes of a young boy sent to live away from home, and his companions,

9275-541: The " aristocracy of officials " of Upper Telemark , the region's civil servant elite. Jørgen Haave writes that Ibsen "had strong family ties to the families who had held power and wealth in Telemark since the mid-1500s." Henrik Ibsen himself wrote that "my parents were members on both sides of the most respected families in Skien", and that he was closely related to "just about all the patrician families who then dominated

9450-404: The 1850s, but that it happened after Henrik had left home, at a time when he was establishing himself as a successful man of theatre, while his extended family, such as his uncles Henrik Johan Paus , Christian Cornelius Paus and Christopher Blom Paus , were firmly established in Skien's elite as lawyers, government officials and wealthy shipowners. Haave argues that the story of the Ibsen family

9625-702: The 1860s. From 1864, he lived for 27 years in Italy and Germany, primarily in Rome , Dresden , and Munich , making only brief visits to Norway, before moving to Christiania in 1891. Most of Ibsen's plays are set in Norway, often in bourgeois environments and places reminiscent of Skien, and he frequently drew inspiration from family members. Ibsen's early poetic and cinematic play Peer Gynt has strong surreal elements. After Peer Gynt Ibsen abandoned verse and wrote in realistic prose. Several of his later dramas were considered scandalous to many of his era, when European theatre

9800-537: The 1880s, the anarchist theorist Peter Kropotkin responded, "read only Chekhov's novels!" Raymond Tallis further recounts that Vladimir Lenin believed his reading of the short story Ward No. 6 "made him a revolutionary". Upon finishing the story, Lenin is said to have remarked: "I absolutely had the feeling that I was shut up in Ward 6 myself!" In Chekhov's lifetime, British and Irish critics generally did not find his work pleasing; E. J. Dillon thought "the effect on

9975-406: The 1987 short story "Errand" by Raymond Carver . In 1908, Olga wrote this account of her husband's last moments: Anton sat up unusually straight and said loudly and clearly (although he knew almost no German): Ich sterbe ('I'm dying'). The doctor calmed him, took a syringe, gave him an injection of camphor , and ordered champagne. Anton took a full glass, examined it, smiled at me and said: 'It's

10150-421: The 20th century to this day. Mikhail Chekhov considered Ivanov a key moment in his brother's intellectual development and literary career. From this period comes an observation of Chekhov's that has become known as Chekhov's gun , a dramatic principle that requires that every element in a narrative be necessary and irreplaceable, and that everything else be removed. Remove everything that has no relevance to

10325-587: The Atlantic in America. No other artist, apart from Richard Wagner , had such an effect internationally, inspiring almost blasphemous adoration and hysterical abuse. After the publication of Ghosts , he wrote: "while the storm lasted, I have made many studies and observations and I shall not hesitate to exploit them in my future writings." Indeed, his next play, An Enemy of the People, was initially regarded by

10500-612: The Danish Norse saga -inspired Romantic tragedian Adam Oehlenschläger and Ludvig Holberg , "the Scandinavian Molière". A major influence on Ibsen were Danish writers, such as Meïr Aron Goldschmidt and Georg Brandes , as well as his collaboration and friendship with the early Realist Swedish poet Carl Snoilsky . On 23 May 1906, Ibsen died in his home at Arbins gade 1 in Kristiania (now Oslo) after

10675-594: The Debtors (Scotland) Act 1987 (c 18), though in practice imprisonment for the non-payment of debts had ceased to be relevant in Scotland since the passing of s.4 of the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1880 (c 34). Imprisonment remains competent in cases in which a court order, or order ad factum praestandum is breached by a debtor. While imprisonment for debt was competent in Scots law, it was provided that debtors who were within

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10850-617: The Ministry for Health. It remained in use as a prison until the nineteenth century. In line with the European Convention Act, no person is to be deprived of his liberty because of the incapability to fulfill a contractual obligation. Debtors in the United Arab Emirates , including Dubai , are imprisoned for failing to pay their debts. This is a common practice in the country. Banks are not sympathetic to

11025-653: The Norwegian Theater, experience that was to prove valuable when he continued writing. Ibsen returned to Christiania in 1858 to become the creative director of the Christiania Theatre . He married Suzannah Thoresen on 18 June 1858 and she gave birth to their only child Sigurd on 23 December 1859. The couple lived in difficult financial circumstances and Ibsen became very disenchanted with life in Norway. In 1864, he left Christiania and went to Sorrento in Italy in self-imposed exile. He spent

11200-490: The People , The Wild Duck , Rosmersholm , Hedda Gabler , The Master Builder , and When We Dead Awaken . Ibsen is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare , and A Doll's House was the world's most performed play in 2006. Ibsen was born into the merchant elite of the port town of Skien , and had strong family ties to the families who had held power and wealth in Telemark since

11375-427: The People , and Ghosts include numerous references to Ibsen's relatives, family history, and childhood memories. However, despite Ibsen's use of his family as an inspiration for his plays, Haave criticizes the uncritical use of Ibsen's dramas as biographical sources and the "naive" readings of them as literal representations of his family members, in particular his father. At fifteen, Ibsen left school. He moved to

11550-1000: The Polar Star , and was Knight, First Class of the Order of Vasa . Well known stage directors in Austria and Germany such as Theodor Lobe (1833–1905), Paul Barnay (1884–1960), Max Burckhard (1854–1912), Otto Brahm (1856–1912), Carl Heine (1861–1927), Paul Albert Glaeser-Wilken (1874–1942), Victor Barnowsky (1875–1952), Eugen Robert (1877–1944), Leopold Jessner (1878–1945), Ludwig Barnay (1884–1960), Alfred Rotter (1886–1933), Fritz Rotter (1888–1939), Paul Rose  [ de ] (1900–1973) and Peter Zadek (1926–2009), all directed productions of Ibsen's work. In 2011 Håkon Anton Fagerås made two busts in bronze of Ibsen—one for Parco Ibsen in Sorrento , Italy, and one in Skien kommune. In 2012, Håkon Anton Fagerås sculpted

11725-712: The Protocol No. 4 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms . Article 1 of the protocol states that "no one shall be deprived of his liberty merely on the ground of inability to fulfil a contractual obligation." Currently, 42 states have ratified the protocol. In 1969 the American Convention on Human Rights , also known as the Pact of San José, was adopted by members of

11900-478: The Saxon constitution, became the catchword for public law debtors' prison. In the early modern era, the debtor's detainment or citizen's arrest remained valid in Germany. Sometimes it was used as a tool to compel payment, other times it was used to secure the arrest of an individual and ensure a trial against them in order to garnish wages, replevin or a form of trover . This practice was particularly disgraceful to

12075-491: The Skien elite, e.g. through lavish parties; their closest neighbours on Southern Venstøp were former shipowner and mayor of Skien Ulrich Frederik Cudrio and his family, who also had been forced to sell their townhouse. In 1843, after Henrik left home, the Ibsen family moved to a townhouse at Snipetorp, owned by Knud Ibsen's half-brother and former apprentice Christopher Blom Paus, who had established himself as an independent merchant in Skien in 1836 and who eventually became one of

12250-512: The Skien of his childhood: In my childhood, Skien was an extremely joyful and festive town, quite the opposite of what it would later become. Many highly cultured, prosperous families at that time lived partly in the city itself, partly on large farms in the area. Close or more remote kinship connected most of these families amongst themselves, and balls, dinner parties, and musical soirées came one after another in rapid succession both during winters and summers. [...] Visits from strangers were almost

12425-400: The Stockmanngården building, where they rented a part of the building and lived with a maid. On the first floor the brothers sold foreign wines and a variety of luxury items, while also engaging in wholesale export of timber in cooperation with their first cousin Diderik von Cappelen (1795–1866). On 1 December 1825, Knud married his stepfather's niece Marichen, who then moved in with them. Henrik

12600-635: The amount of freedom they allowed the debtor. With a little money, a debtor could pay for some freedoms; some prisons allowed inmates to conduct business and to receive visitors; others (including the Fleet and King's Bench Prisons ) even allowed inmates to live a short distance outside the prison – a practice known as the 'Liberty of the Rules' – and the Fleet even tolerated clandestine ' Fleet Marriages '. Life in these prisons, however,

12775-524: The authorities. In India, courts have been known to jail financial defaulters as a way to coerce them to pay back their private creditors, or the state. For example, in the case of Subrata Roy , his bail was conditional on him paying back large sums to the investors or the regulators. An eighteenth century debtors' prison is found within the Castellania in Valletta , Malta, now used as offices by

12950-576: The bounds of Holyrood Park (the whole of which was deemed a sanctuary) were exempt, and accordingly, till the abolition of imprisonment for debt, many debtors lived in lodgings within the bounds of the park. Such people were subject to the Bailie of the Park, who had power, in certain cases, to imprison them himself, in the Abbey Jail. Ιmprisonment for debts, whether to the tax office or to a private bank,

13125-447: The child slept with the convicts and soldiers all in a heap together. Chekhov later concluded that charity was not the answer, but that the government had a duty to finance humane treatment of the convicts. His findings were published in 1893 and 1894 as Ostrov Sakhalin ( The Island of Sakhalin ), a work of social science, not literature. Chekhov found literary expression for the "Hell of Sakhalin" in his long short story " The Murder ",

13300-405: The child. Seeing the damage he has wrought, Gregers determines to repair things, and suggests to Hedvig that she sacrifice the wild duck, her wounded pet, to prove her love for Hjalmar. Hedvig, alone among the characters, recognizes that Gregers always speaks in code, and looking for the deeper meaning in the first important statement Gregers makes which does not contain one, kills herself rather than

13475-411: The city's leading shipowners. Knud continued to struggle to maintain his business and had some success in the 1840s, but in the 1850s his business ventures and professional activities came to an end, and he became reliant on support from his successful younger half-brothers. Ibsen scholar Ellen Rees notes that historical and biographical research into Ibsen's life in the 21st century has been marked by

13650-419: The coercive arrest ( Pressionshaft ), and got rid of the many arbitrary sanctions that were not universal. In some areas (like Nürnberg) the debtor could sell or redistribute their debt. In most of the cities, the towers and city fortifications functioned as jails. For certain sanctions there were designated prisons, hence some towers being called debtors' prison ( Schuldturm ). The term Schuldturm , outside of

13825-428: The conservatism of society, but also the liberalism of the time. He illustrated how people on both sides of the social spectrum could be equally self-serving. An Enemy of the People was written as a response to the people who had rejected his previous work, Ghosts . The plot of the play is a veiled look at the way people reacted to the plot of Ghosts . The protagonist is a physician in a vacation spot whose primary draw

14000-633: The country, and I will come and see her.... I promise to be an excellent husband, but give me a wife who, like the moon, won't appear in my sky every day. The letter proved prophetic of Chekhov's marital arrangements with Olga: he lived largely at Yalta, she in Moscow, pursuing her acting career. In 1902, Olga suffered a miscarriage; and Donald Rayfield has offered evidence, based on the couple's letters, that conception occurred when Chekhov and Olga were apart, although other Russian scholars have rejected that claim. The literary legacy of this long-distance marriage

14175-557: The course of the play, the many secrets that lie behind the Ekdals' apparently happy home are revealed to Gregers, who insists on pursuing the absolute truth, or the "Summons of the Ideal". Among these truths: Gregers' father impregnated his servant Gina, then married her off to Hjalmar to legitimize the child. Another man has been disgraced and imprisoned for a crime the elder Werle committed. Furthermore, while Hjalmar spends his days working on

14350-458: The critics to be simply his response to the violent criticism which had greeted Ghosts . Ibsen expected criticism; as he wrote to his publisher: " Ghosts will probably cause alarm in some circles, but it can't be helped. If it did not, there would have been no necessity for me to have written it." Ibsen didn't just read the critical reaction to his plays, he actively corresponded with critics, publishers, theatre directors, and newspaper editors on

14525-399: The daughter of Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson . Their son was Tancred Ibsen , who became a film director and was married to Lillebil Ibsen ; their only child was diplomat Tancred Ibsen, Jr. His male line together with the male-descended lines of the wider Ibsen family he belonged to will end with the deaths of Tancred Jr.'s two daughters. Sigurd Ibsen's daughter, Irene Ibsen , married Josias Bille,

14700-473: The debtors once they are in prison, so many just choose to leave the country where they can negotiate for settlements later. The practice of fleeing UAE to avoid arrest because of debt defaults is considered a viable option to customers who are unable to meet their obligations. Many Colonial American jurisdictions established debtors' prisons using the same models used in Great Britain. James Wilson ,

14875-574: The developed and prosperous part of Denmark–Norway . Ibsen's parents, Knud and Marichen , grew up as close relatives, sometimes referred to as "near-siblings," and both belonged to the tightly intertwined Paus family at the Rising estate and in Altenburggården – that is, the extended family of the sibling pair Ole Paus (1766–1855) and Hedevig Paus (1763–1848). After Knud's father Henrich Johan Ibsen (1765–1797) died at sea when Knud

15050-404: The drama, exploring what he termed the "drama of ideas". His next series of plays are often considered his Golden Age, when he entered the height of his power and influence, becoming the center of dramatic controversy across Europe. Ibsen moved from Italy to Dresden , Germany, in 1868, where he spent years writing the play he regarded as his main work, Emperor and Galilean (1873), dramatizing

15225-540: The duck in order to prove her love for him in the ultimate act of self-sacrifice. Only too late do Hjalmar and Gregers realize that the absolute truth of the "ideal" is sometimes too much for the human heart to bear. Late in his career, Ibsen turned to a more introspective drama that had much less to do with denunciations of society's moral values and more to do with the problems of individuals. In such later plays as Hedda Gabler (1890) and The Master Builder (1892), Ibsen explored psychological conflicts that transcended

15400-586: The efforts of William Archer and Edmund Gosse . These in turn had a profound influence on the young James Joyce who venerates Ibsen in his early autobiographical novel Stephen Hero . Ibsen returned to Norway in 1891, but it was in many ways not the Norway he had left. Indeed, he had played a major role in the changes that had happened across society. Modernism was on the rise, not only in the theatre, but across public life. . Ibsen intentionally obscured his influences. However, asked later what he had read when he wrote Catiline , Ibsen replied that he had read only

15575-451: The encounter. Unexpectedly though, they gradually fall deeply in love and end up risking scandal and the security of their family lives. The story masterfully captures their feelings for each other, the inner transformation undergone by the disillusioned male protagonist as a result of falling deeply in love, and their inability to resolve the matter by either letting go of their families or of each other. In May 1903, Chekhov visited Moscow;

15750-607: The evolution of the modern short story. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them. Anton Chekhov was born into a Russian family on the feast day of St. Anthony the Great (17 January Old Style ) 29 January 1860 in Taganrog , a port on the Sea of Azov – on Politseyskaya (Police) street, later renamed Chekhova street – in southern Russia . He

15925-447: The experience "sickening" and painted a comic portrait of the chaotic production in a letter to his brother Alexander, the play was a hit and was praised, to Chekhov's bemusement, as a work of originality. Although Chekhov did not fully realise it at the time, Chekhov's plays, such as The Seagull (written in 1895), Uncle Vanya (written in 1897), The Three Sisters (written in 1900), and The Cherry Orchard (written in 1903) served as

16100-486: The extreme limits of man's degradation." He was particularly moved by the plight of the children living in the penal colony with their parents. For example: On the Amur steamer going to Sakhalin, there was a convict who had murdered his wife and wore fetters on his legs. His daughter, a little girl of six, was with him. I noticed wherever the convict moved the little girl scrambled after him, holding on to his fetters. At night

16275-465: The family into progressively better accommodations. Early in 1886 he was invited to write for one of the most popular papers in St. Petersburg , Novoye Vremya ( New Times ), owned and edited by the millionaire magnate Alexey Suvorin , who paid a rate per line double Leykin's and allowed Chekhov three times the space. Suvorin was to become a lifelong friend, perhaps Chekhov's closest. Before long, Chekhov

16450-661: The family's possessions and finish his education. He remained in Taganrog for three more years, boarding with a man by the name of Selivanov who, like Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard , had bailed out the family for the price of their house. Chekhov had to pay for his own education, which he managed by private tutoring, catching and selling goldfinches , and selling short sketches to the newspapers, among other jobs. He sent every ruble he could spare to his family in Moscow, along with humorous letters to cheer them up. During this time, he read widely and analytically, including

16625-553: The fermenting, germinating ideas of the day." The Wild Duck (1884) is by many considered Ibsen's finest work, and it is certainly one of the most complex, alongside Rosmersholm . When working on the play, Ibsen received his only visit from a relative during his decades in exile, when 21-year old (Count) Christopher Paus paid an extended visit to him in Rome. Jørgen Haave notes that Ibsen "had not been this close to his own family since he left his hometown over 30 years ago," and he

16800-419: The first day that Chekhov moved to Melikhovo, the sick began flocking to him from twenty miles around. They came on foot or were brought in carts, and often he was fetched to patients at a distance. Sometimes from early in the morning peasant women and children were standing before his door waiting. Chekhov's expenditure on drugs was considerable, but the greatest cost was making journeys of several hours to visit

16975-574: The first non-Russians to praise Chekhov's plays was George Bernard Shaw , who subtitled his Heartbreak House "A Fantasia in the Russian Manner on English Themes", and pointed out similarities between the predicament of the British landed class and that of their Russian counterparts as depicted by Chekhov: "the same nice people, the same utter futility". Henrik Ibsen Henrik Johan Ibsen ( / ˈ ɪ b s ən / ; Norwegian: [ˈhɛ̀nrɪk ˈɪ̀psn̩] ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906)

17150-414: The form of syphilis. The mention of venereal disease alone was scandalous, but to show how it could poison a respectable family was considered intolerable. In An Enemy of the People (1882), Ibsen went even further. In earlier plays, controversial elements were important and even pivotal components of the action, but they were on the small scale of individual households. In An Enemy , controversy became

17325-578: The funeral procession of a General Keller by mistake, to the accompaniment of a military band. Chekhov was buried next to his father at the Novodevichy Cemetery . A few months before he died, Chekhov told the writer Ivan Bunin that he thought people might go on reading his writings for seven years. "Why seven?", asked Bunin. "Well, seven and a half", Chekhov replied. "That's not bad. I've got six years to live." Chekhov's posthumous reputation greatly exceeded his expectations. The ovations for

17500-618: The government is still unclear, as courts continue to have this ability for criminal acts. The Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881 , as amended, contains provisions for criminal penalties, including imprisonment, if someone defaults on a debt or a payment obligation. Section 28A of the Securities and Exchange Board of India Act, 1992 (As amended by the Securities Laws (Amendment) Act, 2014) contains provisions for penalties, including imprisonment, for failure to pay back investors or

17675-688: The help of their extended family and accumulated cultural capital. Contrary to the incorrect claims that Ibsen had been born in a small or remote town, Haave points out that Skien had been Eastern Norway's leading commercial city for centuries, and a centre of seafaring, timber exports, and early industrialization that had made Norway the developed and prosperous part of Denmark–Norway . Rees characterizes Ibsen's family as upper class rather than middle class, and part of "the closest thing Norway had to an aristocracy, albeit one that lost most of its power during his lifetime." Ibsen scholar Jon Nygaard stated that Ibsen has an "exceptional upper-class background" and

17850-464: The homebuilding company Selvaag also opened Peer Gynt Sculpture Park in Oslo, Norway, in Henrik Ibsen's honour, making it possible to follow the dramatic play Peer Gynt scene by scene. Will Eno 's adaptation of Ibsen 's Peer Gynt , titled Gnit , had its world premiere at the 37th Humana Festival of New American Plays in March 2013. On 23 May 2006, The Ibsen Museum in Oslo re-opened to

18025-439: The imprisonment of debtors under federal law in 1833 leaving the practice of debtors' prisons to states. While the United States no longer has brick and mortar debtors' prisons, or "jails for debtors" of private debts, the term "debtor's prison" in modern times sometimes refers to the practice of imprisoning indigent criminal defendants for matters related to either a fine or a fee imposed in criminal judgments. To what extent

18200-591: The last section of which is set on Sakhalin, where the murderer Yakov loads coal in the night while longing for home. Chekhov's writing on Sakhalin, especially the traditions and habits of the Gilyak people , is the subject of a sustained meditation and analysis in Haruki Murakami 's novel 1Q84 . It is also the subject of a poem by the Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney , "Chekhov on Sakhalin" (collected in

18375-516: The latter's influence are evident in Brand , it was not until after Brand that Ibsen came to take Kierkegaard seriously. Initially annoyed with his friend Georg Brandes for comparing Brand to Kierkegaard, Ibsen nevertheless read Either/Or and Fear and Trembling . Ibsen's next play Peer Gynt was consciously informed by Kierkegaard. With success, Ibsen became more confident and began to introduce more and more of his own beliefs and judgements into

18550-452: The laws of the State of New York. Its purpose is to foster through lectures, readings, performances, conferences, and publications an understanding of Ibsen's works as they are interpreted as texts and produced on stage and in film and other media. An annual newsletter, Ibsen News and Comment, is distributed to all members. On 20 March 2013, Google celebrated Henrik Ibsen's 185th Birthday with

18725-608: The leading publishers of the time. Chekhov's tone at this stage was harsher than that familiar from his mature fiction. In 1884, Chekhov qualified as a physician, which he considered his principal profession though he made little money from it and treated the poor free of charge. In 1884 and 1885, Chekhov found himself coughing blood, and in 1886 the attacks worsened, but he would not admit his tuberculosis to his family or his friends. He confessed to Leykin, "I am afraid to submit myself to be sounded by my colleagues." He continued writing for weekly periodicals, earning enough money to move

18900-407: The letter had struck him "like a thunderbolt" and confessed, "I have written my stories the way reporters write up their notes about fires—mechanically, half-consciously, caring nothing about either the reader or myself." The admission may have done Chekhov a disservice, since early manuscripts reveal that he often wrote with extreme care, continually revising. Grigorovich's advice nevertheless inspired

19075-545: The life and times of the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate . Although Ibsen himself always looked back on this play as the cornerstone of his entire works, very few shared his opinion, and his next works would be much more acclaimed. Ibsen moved to Munich in 1875 and began work on his first contemporary realist drama The Pillars of Society , first published and performed in 1877. A Doll's House followed in 1879. This play

19250-490: The means to pay their debt, but did not do so, could still be incarcerated for up to six weeks, as could those who defaulted on debts to the court. Initially, there was a significant reduction in the number of debtors imprisoned following the passage of the 1869 Act. By 1870, the total number of debtors imprisoned decreased by almost 2,000, dropping from 9,759 in 1869 to 6,605 in 1870. However, by 1905 that number had increased to 11,427. Some of London's debtors' prisons were

19425-413: The mid-1500s. Both his parents belonged socially or biologically to the Paus family of Rising and Altenburggården —the extended family of the siblings Ole Paus and Hedevig Paus —and Ibsen described his own background as patrician . Ibsen established himself as a theater director in Norway during the 1850s and gained international recognition as a playwright with the plays Brand and Peer Gynt in

19600-644: The model for his son's many portraits of hypocrisy. Chekhov's paternal grandmother was Ukrainian, the Ukrainian language was likely present in his household. Chekhov's mother, Yevgeniya (Morozova), was an excellent storyteller who entertained the children with tales of her travels all over Russia with her cloth-merchant father. "Our talents we got from our father," Chekhov remembered, "but our soul from our mother." In adulthood, Chekhov criticised his brother Alexander 's treatment of his wife and children by reminding him of Pavel's tyranny: "Let me ask you to recall that it

19775-412: The money being spent and the money on the tax return. Its length is limited following the amount of the fine and aims to pressure the debtor to pay his fines, consequently the owed money stays owed to the State. After serving a contrainte , the debt or fine must still be paid. In the late Middle Ages, and at the beginning of the modern era, public law was codified in Germany. This served to standardize

19950-479: The most challenging and rewarding for an actress even in the present day. Ibsen had completely rewritten the rules of drama with a realism which was to be adopted by Chekhov and others, and which we see in the theatre to this day. From Ibsen forward, challenging assumptions and directly speaking about issues has been considered one of the factors that makes a play art rather than entertainment . His works were brought to an English-speaking audience, largely thanks to

20125-416: The most read, Norwegian poet and playwright. Ibsen spent the next several years employed at Det norske Theater (Bergen) , where he was involved in the production of more than 145 plays as a writer, director, and producer. During this period, he published five new—though largely unremarkable—plays. Despite Ibsen's failure to achieve success as a playwright, he gained a great deal of practical experience at

20300-417: The next 27 years in Italy and Germany and only visited Norway a few times during those years. His next play, Brand (1865), brought him the critical acclaim he sought, along with a measure of financial success, as did the following play, Peer Gynt (1867), to which Edvard Grieg composed incidental music and songs. Although Ibsen read excerpts of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and traces of

20475-469: The non-payment of debt was competent at Scots common law, but the effect of imprisonment for such stood in marked contrast to the position in England even after the execution of the Treaty of Union in 1707. As Lord Dunedin observed in 1919, it was 'in direct contradistinction to the view of the law in England, that imprisonment was in no sense a satisfaction of the debt'; the purpose for imprisonment for debt

20650-521: The orchard and the pond, and planted many trees, which, according to Mikhail, he "looked after ... as though they were his children. Like Colonel Vershinin in his Three Sisters , as he looked at them he dreamed of what they would be like in three or four hundred years." The first night of The Seagull , at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg on 17 October 1896, was a fiasco, as

20825-532: The payment of the debt within this stipulated time-period, the creditor could have the debtor 'put to the horn' by a messenger-at-arms. The execution of horning would have to be registered in the General Register of Hornings in Edinburgh. On registration, a warrant for the arrest of the debtor could then be issued. The formal process of 'horning' was not formally abolished until the passing of s.89 of

21000-546: The place and its surroundings." He was baptised at home in the Lutheran state church —membership of which was mandatory—on 28 March and the baptism was confirmed in Christian's Church  [ no ] on 19 June. When Ibsen was born, Skien had for centuries been one of Norway's most important and internationally oriented cities, and a centre of seafaring, timber exports and early industrialization that had made Norway

21175-586: The play The Cherry Orchard in the year of his death served to demonstrate the Russian public's acclaim for the writer, which placed him second in literary celebrity only to Tolstoy , who outlived him by six years. Tolstoy was an early admirer of Chekhov's short stories and had a series that he deemed "first quality" and "second quality" bound into a book. In the first category were: Children , The Chorus Girl , A Play , Home , Misery , The Runaway , In Court , Vanka , Ladies , A Malefactor , The Boys , Darkness , Sleepy , The Helpmate , and The Darling ; in

21350-399: The play was booed by the audience, stinging Chekhov into renouncing the theatre. But the play so impressed the theatre director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko that he convinced his colleague Konstantin Stanislavski to direct a new production for the innovative Moscow Art Theatre in 1898. Stanislavski's attention to psychological realism and ensemble playing coaxed the buried subtleties from

21525-480: The playwright's childhood and background in general. Haave points out that Knud Ibsen's economic problems in the 1830s were mainly the result of the difficult times and something the Ibsen family had in common with most members of the bourgeoisie; Haave further argues that Henrik Ibsen had a happy and comfortable childhood as a member of the upper class, even after the family moved to Venstøp, and that they were able to maintain their lifestyle and patrician identity with

21700-539: The potential for judges to incarcerate legitimately indigent individuals, it amounts to a de facto "debtors' prison" system. During Europe's Middle Ages , debtors, both men and women, were locked up together in a single, large cell until their families paid their debt. Debt prisoners often died of diseases contracted from others interned in debtors' prison for many years. Some debt prisoners were released to become serfs or indentured servants ( debt bondage ) until they paid off their debt in labor. Imprisonment for debt

21875-410: The primary focus, and the antagonist was the entire community. One primary message of the play is that the individual, who stands alone, is more often "right" than the mass of people, who are portrayed as ignorant and sheeplike. Contemporary society's belief was that the community was a noble institution that could be trusted, a notion Ibsen challenged. In An Enemy of the People , Ibsen chastised not only

22050-455: The prominent lawyer Vasily Maklakov visited him almost every day. Maklakov signed Chekhov's will. By May 1904, Chekhov was terminally ill with tuberculosis . Mikhail Chekhov recalled that "everyone who saw him secretly thought the end was not far off, but the nearer [he] was to the end, the less he seemed to realise it". On 3 June, he set off with Olga for the German spa town of Badenweiler in

22225-418: The public, with the house, where Ibsen had spent his last eleven years, completely restored with the original interior, colours, and decor. Ivo de Figueiredo argues that "today, Ibsen belongs to the world. But it is impossible to understand [Ibsen's] path out there without knowing the Danish cultural sphere from which he sprang, from which he liberated himself and which he ended up shaping. Ibsen developed as

22400-529: The reader of Chekhov's tales was repulsion at the gallery of human waste represented by his fickle, spineless, drifting people" and R. E. C. Long said "Chekhov's characters were repugnant, and that Chekhov revelled in stripping the last rags of dignity from the human soul". After his death, Chekhov was reappraised. Constance Garnett 's translations won him an English-language readership and the admiration of writers such as James Joyce , Virginia Woolf , and Katherine Mansfield , whose story "The Child Who Was Tired"

22575-632: The right to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment . During 1971 in Tate v. Short , the Court found it unconstitutional to impose a fine as a sentence and then automatically convert it into "a jail term solely because the defendant is indigent and cannot forthwith pay the fine in full." And in the 1983 ruling for Bearden v. Georgia , the Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment bars courts from revoking probation for

22750-511: The same toothless old age and disgusting death, as with market-women." In 1893/1894 he worked as a Zemstvo doctor in Zvenigorod , which has numerous sanatoriums and rest homes. A local hospital is named after him. In 1894, Chekhov began writing his play The Seagull in a lodge he had built in the orchard at Melikhovo. In the two years since he had moved to the estate, he had refurbished the house, taken up agriculture and horticulture, tended

22925-434: The second: A Transgression , Sorrow , The Witch , Verochka , In a Strange Land , The Cook's Wedding , A Tedious Business , An Upheaval , Oh! The Public! , The Mask , A Woman's Luck , Nerves , The Wedding , A Defenceless Creature , and Peasant Wives. Chekhov's work also found praise from several of Russia's most influential radical political thinkers. If anyone doubted the gloom and miserable poverty of Russia in

23100-455: The sick, which reduced his time for writing. However, Chekhov's work as a doctor enriched his writing by bringing him into intimate contact with all sections of Russian society: for example, he witnessed at first hand the peasants' unhealthy and cramped living conditions, which he recalled in his short story "Peasants". Chekhov visited the upper classes as well, recording in his notebook: "Aristocrats? The same ugly bodies and physical uncleanliness,

23275-442: The small town of Grimstad to become an apprentice pharmacist . At that time he began writing plays. In 1846, when Ibsen was 18, he had a liaison with Else Sophie Jensdatter Birkedalen which produced a son, Hans Jacob Hendrichsen Birkdalen, whose upbringing Ibsen paid for until the boy was fourteen, though Ibsen never saw the child. Ibsen went to Christiania (later spelled Kristiania and then renamed Oslo) intending to matriculate at

23450-511: The story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there. The death of Chekhov's brother Nikolai from tuberculosis in 1889 influenced A Dreary Story , finished that September, about a man who confronts the end of a life that he realises has been without purpose. Mikhail Chekhov recorded his brother's depression and restlessness after Nikolai's death. Mikhail

23625-490: The subject of incestuous relationships in several plays, notably in his masterpiece Rosmersholm . On the other hand, Jørgen Haave points out that his parents' close relationship was not that unusual among the Skien elite. In 1825, Henrik's father Knud acquired the burghership of Skien and established an independent business as a timber and luxury goods merchant there, with his younger brother, Christopher Blom Paus, then aged 15, as his apprentice. The two brothers moved into

23800-492: The subject. The interpretation of his work, both by critics and directors, concerned him greatly. He often advised directors on which actor or actress would be suitable for a particular role. (An example of this is a letter he wrote to Hans Schroder in November 1884, with detailed instructions for the production of The Wild Duck . ) Ibsen's plays initially reached a far wider audience as read plays rather than in performance. It

23975-535: The support of their relatives in the family Blom . Henrik Ibsen's great-grandfather was the forest inspector Cornelius Paus . The children from Ole's and Hedevig's homes maintained close contact throughout Knud's and Marichen's childhood; notably, Ole's oldest son, Knud's half-brother Henrik Johan Paus , was raised in Hedevig's home. Older Ibsen scholars have claimed that Henrik Ibsen was fascinated by his parents' "strange, almost incestuous marriage", and he would treat

24150-441: The text, and restored Chekhov's interest in playwriting. The Art Theatre commissioned more plays from Chekhov and the following year staged Uncle Vanya , which Chekhov had completed in 1896. In the last decades of his life he became an atheist . In March 1897, Chekhov suffered a major haemorrhage of the lungs while on a visit to Moscow. With great difficulty he was persuaded to enter a clinic, where doctors diagnosed tuberculosis on

24325-464: The top place among Ibsen's works"; Ibsen himself regarded Emperor and Galilean as his masterpiece . Ibsen is often ranked as one of the most distinguished playwrights in the European tradition, and is widely regarded as the foremost playwright of the nineteenth century. Ibsen influenced other playwrights and novelists such as George Bernard Shaw , Oscar Wilde , and James Joyce . Considered

24500-637: The town of Bowdon, Georgia , a sitting municipal judge, Richard A. Diment, was surreptitiously recorded threatening defendants with jail time for traffic violations if they did not provide immediate payment. The incidents caused the Bowdon Municipal Court to be closed for a month in order to implement changes in policy. In 1963, members of the Council of Europe , an intergovernmental human rights organization based in Strasbourg , adopted

24675-433: The university. He soon rejected the idea (his earlier attempts at entering university were blocked as he did not pass all his entrance exams), preferring to commit himself to writing. His first play, the tragedy Catilina (1850), was published under the pseudonym "Brynjolf Bjarme", when he was only 22, but it was not performed. His first play to be staged, The Burial Mound (1850), received little attention. Still, Ibsen

24850-404: The upper part of his lungs and ordered a change in his manner of life. After his father's death in 1898, Chekhov bought a plot of land on the outskirts of Yalta and built a villa (The White Dacha) , into which he moved with his mother and sister the following year. Though he planted trees and flowers, kept dogs and tame cranes, and received guests such as Leo Tolstoy and Maxim Gorky , Chekhov

25025-571: The volume Station Island ). Rebecca Gould has compared Chekhov's book on Sakhalin to Katherine Mansfield 's Urewera Notebook (1907). In 2013, the Wellcome Trust-funded play 'A Russian Doctor', performed by Andrew Dawson and researched by Professor Jonathan Cole, explored Chekhov's experiences on Sakhalin Island. Mikhail Chekhov, a member of the household at Melikhovo, described the extent of his brother's medical commitments: From

25200-463: The whole family. To support them and to pay his tuition fees, he wrote daily short, humorous sketches and vignettes of contemporary Russian life, many under pseudonyms such as "Antosha Chekhonte" (Антоша Чехонте) and "Man Without Spleen" (Человек без селезенки). His prodigious output gradually earned him a reputation as a satirical chronicler of Russian street life, and by 1882 he was writing for Oskolki ( Fragments ), owned by Nikolai Leykin , one of

25375-400: The widespread practice, possibly for the first time. Increasing disfavor over debtors' prisons along with the advent and early development of U.S. bankruptcy laws led states to begin restricting imprisonment for most civil debts. At that time growing use of the poorhouse and poor farm were also seen as institutional alternatives for debtors' prisons. The United States ostensibly eliminated

25550-511: The works of Cervantes , Turgenev , Goncharov , and Schopenhauer , and wrote a full-length comic drama, Fatherless , which his brother Alexander dismissed as "an inexcusable though innocent fabrication." Chekhov also experienced a series of love affairs, one with the wife of a teacher. In 1879, Chekhov completed his schooling and joined his family in Moscow, having gained admission to the medical school at I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University . Chekhov then assumed responsibility for

25725-536: Was despotism and lying that ruined your mother's youth. Despotism and lying so mutilated our childhood that it's sickening and frightening to think about it. Remember the horror and disgust we felt in those times when Father threw a tantrum at dinner over too much salt in the soup and called Mother a fool." Chekhov attended the Greek School in Taganrog and the Taganrog Gymnasium (since renamed

25900-485: Was 20 years, for instance, before the authorities would allow Ghosts to be performed in Norway. Each new play that Ibsen wrote, from 1879 onwards, had an explosive effect on intellectual circles. This was greatest for A Doll's House and Ghosts , and it did lessen with the later plays, but the translation of Ibsen's works into German, French, and English during the decade following the initial publication of each play—as well as frequent new productions as and when permission

26075-462: Was a Dane". This, however, is not completely accurate; notably through his grandmother Hedevig Paus, Ibsen was descended from the Paus family , often considered one of the oldest families in Norway. Ibsen's ancestors had mostly lived in Norway for several generations, even though many had foreign ancestry. The name Ibsen is originally a patronymic , meaning "son of Ib" (Ib is a Danish variant of Jacob ). The patronymic became "frozen", i.e. it became

26250-478: Was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism " and the most influential playwright of the 19th century, as well of one of the most influential playwrights in Western literature more generally. His major works include Brand , Peer Gynt , Emperor and Galilean , A Doll's House , Ghosts , An Enemy of

26425-478: Was a former protégée and sometime lover of Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko whom he had first met at rehearsals for The Seagull . Up to that point, Chekhov, known as "Russia's most elusive literary bachelor", had preferred passing liaisons and visits to brothels over commitment. He had once written to Suvorin: By all means I will be married if you wish it. But on these conditions: everything must be as it has been hitherto—that is, she must live in Moscow while I live in

26600-555: Was a shipowner, timber merchant, and owned a large liquor distillery at Lundetangen and a farm outside of town, and after his death, Hedevig took over the business in 1824. The siblings Ole and Hedevig Paus were born in Lårdal in Upper Telemark , where the Paus family belonged to the region's elite, the " aristocracy of officials ," and had moved to Skien at a young age with their oldest sister, joining Skien's merchant elite with

26775-591: Was also practised in Islam. Debtors who refused to pay their debts could be detained for several months in order to exert pressure on them. If they proved insolvent, they were released before being placed under legal guardianship. Article 1 of Protocol 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights prohibits the imprisonment of people for breach of a contract. Turkey has signed but never ratified Protocol 4. Debtor's prison, both for private and State debt,

26950-543: Was always relieved to leave his "hot Siberia " for Moscow or travels abroad. He vowed to move to Taganrog as soon as a water supply was installed there. In Yalta he completed two more plays for the Art Theatre, composing with greater difficulty than in the days when he "wrote serenely, the way I eat pancakes now". He took a year each over Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard . On 25 May 1901, Chekhov married Olga Knipper quietly, owing to his horror of weddings. She

27125-427: Was attracting literary as well as popular attention. The sixty-four-year-old Dmitry Grigorovich , a celebrated Russian writer of the day, wrote to Chekhov after reading his short story "The Huntsman" that "You have real talent, a talent that places you in the front rank among writers in the new generation." He went on to advise Chekhov to slow down, write less, and concentrate on literary quality. Chekhov replied that

27300-641: Was born on 20 March 1828 in Stockmanngården into an affluent merchant family in the prosperous port town of Skien in Bratsberg (Telemark). He was the son of the merchant Knud Plesner Ibsen (1797–1877) and Marichen Cornelia Martine Altenburg (1799–1869), and he grew up socially as a member of the Paus family , which consisted of the siblings Ole and Hedevig Paus and their tightly knit families. Ibsen's ancestors were primarily merchants and shipowners in cities such as Skien and Bergen, or members of

27475-412: Was born there in 1828. In 1830, Marichen's mother Hedevig left Altenburggården and her properties and business ventures to her son-in-law Knud, and the Ibsen family moved to Marichen's childhood home in 1831. During the 1820s and 1830s, Knud was a wealthy young merchant in Skien, and he was the city's 16th largest taxpayer in 1833. In his unfinished biography From Skien to Rome, Henrik Ibsen wrote about

27650-565: Was common in Ancien Régime France. It was suppressed during the French Revolution (1793–1797), but later reinstated. The debtor's prison for civil debts was abolished in 1867. France still allows for contrainte judiciaire , ordered by a judge, for persons unwilling to pay court-ordered fines as part of a judicial sentence. Older, underage and unsolvable persons are exempted from the contrainte . Though France has

27825-402: Was declared bankrupt after overextending his finances building a new house, having been cheated by a contractor named Mironov. To avoid debtor's prison he fled to Moscow, where his two eldest sons, Alexander and Nikolai , were attending university. The family lived in poverty in Moscow. Chekhov's mother was physically and emotionally broken by the experience. Chekhov was left behind to sell

28000-458: Was determined to be a playwright, although the numerous plays he wrote in the following years remained unsuccessful. Ibsen's main inspiration in the early period, right up to Peer Gynt , was apparently the Norwegian author Henrik Wergeland and the Norwegian folk tales as collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe . In Ibsen's youth, Wergeland was the most acclaimed, and by far

28175-445: Was eager to hear news from his family and hometown. Shortly after the visit Ibsen declared that he had overcome a writer's block . The Wild Duck draws inspiration from Ibsen's family and tells the story of Gregers Werle – described by Ibsen scholar Jon Nygaard as representing the spirit of the Paus family – a young man who returns to his hometown after an extended exile, and who is reunited with his boyhood friend Hjalmar Ekdal. Over

28350-416: Was expected to model strict morals of family life and propriety. Ibsen's later work examined the realities that lay behind the façades, revealing much that was disquieting to a number of his contemporaries. He had a critical eye and conducted a free inquiry into the conditions of life and issues of morality. In many critics' estimates The Wild Duck and Rosmersholm are "vying with each other as rivals for

28525-517: Was far from pleasant, and the inmates were forced to pay for their keep. Samuel Byrom, son of the writer and poet John Byrom , was imprisoned for debt in the Fleet in 1725, and in 1729 he sent a petition to his old school friend, the Duke of Dorset , in which he raged against the injustices of the system. Some debtor prisoners were even less fortunate, being sent to prisons with a mixture of vicious criminals and petty criminals, and many more were confined to

28700-656: Was founded in 1978 at the close of the Ibsen Sesquicentennial Symposium held in New York City to mark the 150th anniversary of Henrik Ibsen's birth. Distinguished Ibsen translator and critic Rolf Fjelde , Professor of Literature at Pratt Institute and the chief organizer of the Symposium, was elected Founding President. In December 1979, the ISA was certified as a non-profit corporation under

28875-475: Was granted—meant that Ibsen remained a topic of lively conversation throughout the latter decades of the 19th century. When A Doll's House was published, it had an explosive effect: it was the centre of every conversation at every social gathering in Christiania. One hostess even wrote on the invitations to her soirée, "You are politely requested not to mention Mr Ibsen's new play". Ibsen was nominated for

29050-527: Was imprisoned for debt between 1808 and 1809 where he made use of his time by writing "Memoirs of the War". Debtors' prisons were prevalent throughout the United States until the mid-19th century. Economic hardships following the War of 1812 with Great Britain helped swell prison populations with simple debtors. This resulted in significant attention being given to plights of the poor and most dependent jailed under

29225-540: Was newborn in 1797, his mother Johanne Plesner (1770–1847) married captain Ole Paus (1766–1855) the following year. Like Henrich Johan Ibsen before him, Paus thus became the brother-in-law of Skien's wealthiest man, Diderik von Cappelen . In 1799, Ole Paus sold the Ibsen House in Skien's Løvestrædet (Lion's Street), which he had inherited from his wife's first husband, and bought the estate Rising outside Skien from

29400-402: Was not to discharge the obligation to pay, but rather to act as a compulsitor to force the debtor into revealing any hidden assets. The Scots law allowing the imprisonment of debtors was grounded in large part by an Act of Sederunt of 23 November 1613, which introduced the process of 'horning' whereby the creditor would demand the payment of the debt by a certain date. If the debtor did not satisfy

29575-458: Was particularly popular among boys from bourgeois homes in Europe in the early 1800s. In contrast to his father, who was described as sociable and playful with a cheerful and friendly demeanor, Henrik was depicted as a more introverted personality. This trait was said to be shared with several relatives in the Paus family, and later with his own son, Sigurd . Johan Kielland Bergwitz claimed that "it

29750-529: Was researching prisons at that time as part of his law studies. Anton Chekhov, in a search for purpose in his own life, himself soon became obsessed with the issue of prison reform. In 1890, Chekhov undertook an arduous journey by train, horse-drawn carriage, and river steamer to the Russian Far East and the katorga , or penal colony, on Sakhalin Island , north of Japan. He spent three months there interviewing thousands of convicts and settlers for

29925-425: Was so malicious. No one wanted to be with him." When Henrik Ibsen was around seven years old, his father's fortunes took a turn for the worse, and in 1835 the family was forced to sell Altenburggården. The following year they moved to their stately summer home and farm, Venstøp  [ no ] , outside of the city. They were still relatively affluent, had four servants, and socialised with other members of

30100-409: Was still practiced until January 2008, when the law changed after imprisonment for unpaid taxes, as well as other debts to the government or to the social security office, was declared unconstitutional after having been practiced for 173 years; imprisonment was, however, still retained for debts to private banks. The situation regarding imprisonment (προσωποκράτηση (prosōpokrátēsē): custody) for debts to

30275-513: Was the reception of A Doll's House which brought Ibsen international acclaim. Ghosts followed in 1881, another scathing commentary on the morality of Ibsen's society, in which a widow reveals to her pastor that she had hidden the evils of her marriage for its duration. The pastor had advised her to marry her fiancé despite his philandering, and she did so in the belief that her love would reform him. But his philandering continued right up until his death, and his vices are passed on to their son in

30450-469: Was the third of six surviving children; he had two older brothers, Alexander and Nikolai , and three younger siblings, Ivan, Maria , and Mikhail . His father, Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov, the son of a former serf and his wife, was from the village Olkhovatka ( Voronezh Governorate ) and ran a grocery store. He was a director of the parish choir, a devout Orthodox Christian , and a physically abusive father. Pavel Chekhov has been seen by some historians as

30625-514: Was this patrician class that formed his cultural identity and upbringing." Haave points to many examples of both Henrik Ibsen and other members of his family having a condescending attitude towards common Norwegian farmers, viewing them as "some sort of primitive indigenous population," and being very conscious of their own identity as members of the sophisticated upper class. Haave points out that Ibsen's most immediate family—Knud, Marichen and Henrik's siblings—disintegrated financially and socially in

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