Marichen Cornelia Martine Altenburg (24 April 1799 – 3 June 1869) was the mother of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen and is known as the model for several characters in some of Ibsen's most famous plays, including Åse in Peer Gynt . Through the Paus family —the family of Marichen's mother Hedevig and Knud's stepfather Ole Paus —Marichen was raised as a close relative of her would-be husband Knud Ibsen , although they were not closely related biologically.
176-599: Henrik Johan Ibsen ( / ˈ ɪ b s ən / ; Norwegian: [ˈhɛ̀nrɪk ˈɪ̀psn̩] ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) 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
352-475: 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
528-723: A higher power and meaning in the world. Modernism often yearns for a romantic or metaphysical centre, but later finds its collapse. This distinction between modernism and romanticism extends to their respective treatments of 'symbol'. The romantics at times see an essential relation (the 'ground') between the symbol (or the 'vehicle', in I.A. Richards 's terms) and its 'tenor' (its meaning)—for example in Coleridge's description of nature as 'that eternal language which thy God / Utters'. But while some romantics may have perceived nature and its symbols as God's language, for other romantic theorists it remains inscrutable. As Goethe (not himself
704-567: A mystical approach to suggest a non-rational sense of meaning. For these reasons, modernist metaphors may be unnatural, as for instance in T.S. Eliot's description of an evening 'spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table'. Similarly, for many later modernist poets nature is unnaturalized and at times mechanized, as for example in Stephen Oliver's image of the moon busily 'hoisting' itself into consciousness. Modernism developed out of Romanticism's revolt against
880-679: 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
1056-681: A Circle ), which he later called the first abstract painting. In 1912, Metzinger and Gleizes wrote the first (and only) major Cubist manifesto, Du "Cubisme" , published in time for the Salon de la Section d'Or , the largest Cubist exhibition to date. In 1912 Metzinger painted and exhibited his enchanting La Femme au Cheval (Woman with a Horse) and Danseuse au Café ( Dancer in a Café ) . Albert Gleizes painted and exhibited his Les Baigneuses (The Bathers) and his monumental Le Dépiquage des Moissons ( Harvest Threshing ). This work, along with La Ville de Paris ( City of Paris ) by Robert Delaunay ,
1232-409: A conservative position. Some even argue that Modernism in literature and art functioned to sustain an elite culture that excluded the majority of the population. Surrealism , which originated in the early 1920s, came to be regarded by the public as the most extreme form of modernism, or "the avant-garde of modernism". The word "surrealist" was coined by Guillaume Apollinaire and first appeared in
1408-431: 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
1584-554: A desire to change how " human beings in a society interact and live together ". The modernist movement emerged during the late 19th century in response to significant changes in Western culture , including secularization and the growing influence of science. It is characterized by a self-conscious rejection of tradition and the search for newer means of cultural expression . Modernism was influenced by widespread technological innovation , industrialization, and urbanization, as well as
1760-401: A direct means of accessing a higher reality. Modernism often rejects 19th-century realism when the latter is understood as focusing on the embodiment of meaning within a naturalistic representation. Instead, some modernists aim at a more 'real' realism, one that is uncentered. For instance, Picasso's 1907 Proto-Cubist painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon does not present its subjects from
1936-593: 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
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#17328011418082112-479: 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
2288-524: A family that belonged to the regional elite there, the " aristocracy of officials ". She grew up in the stately Altenburg house in central Skien. On 1 December 1825, she married Knud Ibsen , who had established himself as an independent merchant in Skien earlier in that year. Knud Ibsen was the step-son of her uncle, shipowner Ole Paus (who was also best man at the wedding), and they had known each other since childhood. Joan Templeton writes that "the marriage
2464-770: 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 the Polar Star , and
2640-425: A line from W. B. Yeats : "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold" (in ' The Second Coming '). Modernists often search for a metaphysical 'centre' but experience its collapse. ( Postmodernism , by way of contrast, celebrates that collapse, exposing the failure of metaphysics, such as Jacques Derrida 's deconstruction of metaphysical claims.) Philosophically, the collapse of metaphysics can be traced back to
2816-599: 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
2992-458: 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,
3168-524: 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
3344-501: 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
3520-522: A revolutionary culture that included political revolution. In Russia after the 1917 Revolution , there was indeed initially a burgeoning of avant-garde cultural activity, which included Russian Futurism . However, others rejected conventional politics as well as artistic conventions, believing that a revolution of political consciousness had greater importance than a change in political structures. But many modernists saw themselves as apolitical. Others, such as T. S. Eliot , rejected mass popular culture from
3696-442: A romantic) said, ‘the idea [or meaning] remains eternally and infinitely active and inaccessible in the image’. This was extended in modernist theory which, drawing on its symbolist precursors, often emphasizes the inscrutability and failure of symbol and metaphor. For example, Wallace Stevens seeks and fails to find meaning in nature, even if he at times seems to sense such a meaning. As such, symbolists and modernists at times adopt
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#17328011418083872-549: 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,
4048-429: 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
4224-490: A single point of view, instead presenting a flat, two-dimensional picture plane . The Poet of 1911 is similarly decentered, presenting the body from multiple points of view. As the Peggy Guggenheim Collection comments, "Picasso presents multiple views of each object, as if he had moved around it, and synthesizes them into a single compound image." Modernism, with its sense that "things fall apart,"
4400-466: 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 Altenburg House in the center of Skien with her parents Hedevig Paus and Johan Andreas Altenburg . Altenburg
4576-406: A struggle with the sense of nature's significance, falling under two headings: poems in which the speaker denies that nature has meaning, only for nature to loom up by the end of the poem; and poems in which the speaker claims nature has meaning, only for that meaning to collapse by the end of the poem. Modernism often rejects nineteenth century realism , if the latter is understood as focusing on
4752-427: A tonal center. A primary influence that led to Cubism was the representation of three-dimensional form in the late works of Paul Cézanne , which were displayed in a retrospective at the 1907 Salon d'Automne . In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up, and reassembled in an abstract form; instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent
4928-425: A way for knowledge to explain that which was as yet unknown, came the first wave of modernist works in the opening decade of the 20th century. Although their authors considered them to be extensions of existing trends in art, these works broke the implicit understanding the general public had of art: that artists were the interpreters and representatives of bourgeois culture and ideas. These "modernist" landmarks include
5104-480: 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
5280-411: 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
5456-538: 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
Henrik Ibsen - Misplaced Pages Continue
5632-400: 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
5808-481: Is among the first skyscrapers in the world. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe 's Seagram Building in New York (1956–1958) is often regarded as the pinnacle of this modernist high-rise architecture. Many aspects of modernist design persist within the mainstream of contemporary architecture , though previous dogmatism has given way to a more playful use of decoration, historical quotation, and spatial drama. In 1913—which
5984-788: Is another modernist movement. In 1909, the Parisian newspaper Le Figaro published F. T. Marinetti 's first manifesto. Soon afterward, a group of painters ( Giacomo Balla , Umberto Boccioni , Carlo Carrà , Luigi Russolo , and Gino Severini ) co-signed the Futurist Manifesto . Modeled on Marx and Engels ' famous " Communist Manifesto " (1848), such manifestos put forward ideas that were meant to provoke and to gather followers. However, arguments in favor of geometric or purely abstract painting were, at this time, largely confined to "little magazines" which had only tiny circulations. Modernist primitivism and pessimism were controversial, and
6160-478: Is full of unfounded myths about Marichen and her husband Knud. For example, older Ibsen historiography has often claimed that her husband engaged in heavy speculations, and became an alcoholic tyrant who visited "his bitterness and resentment on his wife and children." These claims have been refuted by newer scholarship, in particular the book Familien Ibsen by Haave. Haave has pointed out that unfounded claims have uncritically been repeated in Ibsen scholarship during
6336-537: Is highly regarded for his humorous short stories that he published in magazines in the 1930s and 1940s, most often in The New Yorker , which are considered to be the first examples of surrealist humor in America. Modern ideas in art also began to appear more frequently in commercials and logos, an early example of which, from 1916, is the famous London Underground logo designed by Edward Johnston . One of
6512-750: 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
6688-483: Is often presented as an early example of a writer using the stream-of-consciousness technique , but Robert Humphrey comments that Proust "is concerned only with the reminiscent aspect of consciousness" and that he "was deliberately recapturing the past for the purpose of communicating; hence he did not write a stream-of-consciousness novel." Stream of consciousness was an important modernist literary innovation, and it has been suggested that Arthur Schnitzler (1862–1931)
6864-534: Is often seen as the apotheosis of Romanticism. As August Wilhelm Schlegel, an early German Romantic, described it, while Romanticism searches for metaphysical truths about character, nature, higher power , and meaning in the world, modernism, although yearning for such a metaphysical center, only finds its collapse. In the context of the Industrial Revolution (~1760–1840), influential innovations included steam-powered industrialization , especially
7040-459: Is similarly decentred, presenting the body from multiple points of view. As the Peggy Guggenheim Collection website puts it, 'Picasso presents multiple views of each object, as if he had moved around it, and synthesizes them into a single compound image'. Modernism, with its sense that 'things fall apart,' can be seen as the apotheosis of romanticism , if romanticism is the (often frustrated) quest for metaphysical truths about character, nature,
7216-819: 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
Henrik Ibsen - Misplaced Pages Continue
7392-608: 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
7568-537: The Hecatomb of the First World War — disclose a common cause and psychological matrix in the fight against (perceived) decadence ." All of them embody bids to access a "supra-personal experience of reality" in which individuals believed they could transcend their mortality and eventually that they would cease to be victims of history to instead become its creators. Literary modernism is often summed up in
7744-867: 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)
7920-774: 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
8096-516: The Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an attempt to reproduce an illusion of visible reality. The arts of cultures other than the European had become accessible and showed alternative ways of describing visual experience to the artist. By the end of the 19th century, many artists felt a need to create a new kind of art that encompassed
8272-488: The avant-garde of various arts and disciplines. It is also often perceived, especially in the West, as a socially progressive movement that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment with the aid of practical experimentation, scientific knowledge, or technology. From this perspective, modernism encourages the re-examination of every aspect of existence. Modernists analyze topics to find
8448-617: The capitalist system and that workers are anything but free led to the formulation of Marxist theory . Art historians have suggested various dates as starting points for modernism. Historian William Everdell argued that modernism began in the 1870s when metaphorical (or ontological ) continuity began to yield to the discrete with mathematician Richard Dedekind 's (1831–1916) Dedekind cut and Ludwig Boltzmann 's (1844–1906) statistical thermodynamics . Everdell also believed modernism in painting began in 1885–1886 with post-Impressionist artist Georges Seurat 's development of Divisionism ,
8624-658: The neoclassicism of the 1920s (as represented most famously by T. S. Eliot and Igor Stravinsky —which rejected popular solutions to modern problems), the rise of fascism , the Great Depression , and the march to war helped to radicalize a generation. Bertolt Brecht , W. H. Auden , André Breton , Louis Aragon , and the philosophers Antonio Gramsci and Walter Benjamin are perhaps the most famous exemplars of this modernist form of Marxism. There were, however, also modernists explicitly of 'the right', including Salvador Dalí , Wyndham Lewis , T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound ,
8800-437: 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
8976-488: 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
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#17328011418089152-686: The " stream of consciousness " technique, such as Dorothy Richardson , James Joyce , and Virginia Woolf (1882–1941). Also important in Bergson's philosophy was the idea of élan vital , the life force, which "brings about the creative evolution of everything." His philosophy also placed a high value on intuition , though without rejecting the importance of the intellect. Important literary precursors of modernism included esteemed writers such as Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881), whose novels include Crime and Punishment (1866) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880); Walt Whitman (1819–1892), who published
9328-470: The " will to power " ( Wille zur macht ), were of central importance: "Nietzsche often identified life itself with 'will to power', that is, with an instinct for growth and durability." Henri Bergson (1859–1941), on the other hand, emphasized the difference between scientific, clock time and the direct, subjective human experience of time. His work on time and consciousness "had a great influence on 20th-century novelists" especially those modernists who used
9504-614: The "dots" used to paint A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte . On the other hand, visual art critic Clement Greenberg called German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) "the first real modernist", although he also wrote, "What can be safely called modernism emerged in the middle of the last century—and rather locally, in France, with Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) in literature and Manet in painting, and perhaps with Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), too, in prose fiction. (It
9680-439: The (perceived) erosion of an overarching ' nomos ', or 'sacred canopy', under the fragmenting and secularizing impact of modernity". Therefore, phenomena apparently unrelated to each other such as " Expressionism , Futurism , Vitalism , Theosophy , Psychoanalysis , Nudism , Eugenics , Utopian town planning and architecture, modern dance , Bolshevism , Organic Nationalism — and even the cult of self-sacrifice that sustained
9856-403: 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
10032-478: The 1860s, two approaches in the arts and letters developed separately in France. The first was Impressionism, a school of painting that initially focused on work done not in studios, but outdoors ( en plein air ). Impressionist paintings attempted to convey that human beings do not see objects, but instead see light itself. The school gathered adherents despite internal divisions among its leading practitioners and became increasingly influential. Initially rejected from
10208-701: 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
10384-467: The 1920s and 1930s were Bertolt Brecht and Federico García Lorca . D. H. Lawrence 's Lady Chatterley's Lover was privately published in 1928, while another important landmark for the history of the modern novel came with the publication of William Faulkner 's The Sound and the Fury in 1929. In the 1930s, in addition to further major works by Faulkner, Samuel Beckett published his first major work,
10560-743: The 1920s until the 1950s. While modernist poetry in English is often viewed as an American phenomenon, with leading exponents including Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Marianne Moore , William Carlos Williams , H.D. , and Louis Zukofsky , there were important British modernist poets, including David Jones , Hugh MacDiarmid , Basil Bunting , and W. H. Auden . European modernist poets include Federico García Lorca , Anna Akhmatova , Constantine Cavafy , and Paul Valéry . The modernist movement continued during this period in Soviet Russia . In 1930 composer Dimitri Shostakovich 's (1906–1975) opera The Nose
10736-659: The 1930s. Between 1930 and 1932 composer Arnold Schoenberg worked on Moses und Aron , one of the first operas to make use of the twelve-tone technique, Pablo Picasso painted in 1937 Guernica , his cubist condemnation of fascism , while in 1939 James Joyce pushed the boundaries of the modern novel further with Finnegans Wake . Also by 1930 modernism began to influence mainstream culture, so that, for example, The New Yorker magazine began publishing work, influenced by modernism, by young writers and humorists like Dorothy Parker , Robert Benchley , E. B. White , S. J. Perelman , and James Thurber , amongst others. Perelman
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#173280114180810912-623: The 19th century. Arguments arose that the values of the artist and those of society were not merely different, but in fact oftentimes opposed, and that society's current values were antithetical to further progress; therefore, civilization could not move forward in its present form. Early in the century, the philosopher Schopenhauer (1788–1860) ( The World as Will and Representation , 1819/20) called into question previous optimism. His ideas had an important influence on later thinkers, including Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). Similarly, Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) and Nietzsche both later rejected
11088-458: The 20th century. Earlier Ibsen scholarship has claimed that Marichen Altenburg was an avid painter and in love with the theatre, and "worried her upright parents by attending every performance of the travelling Danish troupes, and by continuing to play with her childhood dolls when she was grown." Haave points out that there weren't any theatre troupes active in the area at the time, and argues that her artistic activities amounted to no more than what
11264-530: 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
11440-608: 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
11616-485: The Dutch author Menno ter Braak and others. Significant modernist literary works continued to be created in the 1920s and 1930s, including further novels by Marcel Proust , Virginia Woolf , Robert Musil , and Dorothy Richardson . The American modernist dramatist Eugene O'Neill 's career began in 1914, but his major works appeared in the 1920s, 1930s and early 1940s. Two other significant modernist dramatists writing in
11792-712: The German Nazarenes ). The Pre-Raphaelites foreshadowed Manet (1832–1883), with whom modernist painting most definitely begins. They acted on a dissatisfaction with painting as practiced in their time, holding that its realism wasn't truthful enough." Two of the most significant thinkers of the mid-19th century were biologist Charles Darwin (1809–1882), author of On the Origin of Species through Natural Selection (1859), and political scientist Karl Marx (1818–1883), author of Das Kapital (1867). Despite coming from different fields, both of their theories threatened
11968-549: The Hope of Women was the first fully Expressionist work for the theater, which opened on 4 July 1909 in Vienna . The extreme simplification of characters to mythic types , choral effects, declamatory dialogue and heightened intensity would become characteristic of later Expressionist plays. The first full-length Expressionist play was The Son by Walter Hasenclever, which was published in 1914 and first performed in 1916. Futurism
12144-501: The Impressionist Claude Monet had already been innovative in his use of perspective. In 1907, as Picasso was painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon , Oskar Kokoschka was writing Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen ( Murderer, Hope of Women ), the first Expressionist play (produced with scandal in 1909), and Arnold Schoenberg was composing his String Quartet No.2 in F sharp minor (1908), his first composition without
12320-647: 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
12496-487: 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
12672-426: 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
12848-614: The Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–1776), who argued that we never actually perceive one event causing another. We only experience the ' constant conjunction ' of events, and do not perceive a metaphysical 'cause'. Similarly, Hume argued that we never know the self as object, only the self as subject, and we are thus blind to our true natures. Moreover, if we only 'know' through sensory experience—such as sight, touch and feeling—then we cannot 'know' and neither can we make metaphysical claims. Thus, modernism can be driven emotionally by
13024-490: 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
13200-520: 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
13376-572: The atonal ending of Arnold Schoenberg 's Second String Quartet in 1908, the Expressionist paintings of Wassily Kandinsky starting in 1903, and culminating with his first abstract painting and the founding of the Blue Rider group in Munich in 1911, and the rise of fauvism and the inventions of Cubism from the studios of Henri Matisse , Pablo Picasso , Georges Braque , and others, in
13552-405: 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
13728-409: 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
13904-525: The city, including King's Cross station (1852) and Paddington Station (1854). These technological advances spread abroad, leading to later structures such as the Brooklyn Bridge (1883) and the Eiffel Tower (1889), the latter of which broke all previous limitations on how tall man-made objects could be. While such engineering feats radically altered the 19th-century urban environment and
14080-532: The coming of the Great War of 1914–1918 (World War I) and the Russian Revolution of 1917, the world was drastically changed, and doubt was cast on the beliefs and institutions of the past. The failure of the previous status quo seemed self-evident to a generation that had seen millions die fighting over scraps of earth: before 1914, it had been argued that no one would fight such a war, since the cost
14256-433: The concept of absolute originality — the idea of "creation from nothingness" — upheld in the 19th century by both realism and Romanticism , replacing it with techniques of collage , reprise , incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation , revision, and parody. Another feature of modernism was reflexivity about artistic and social convention, which led to experimentation highlighting how works of art are made as well as
14432-428: 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
14608-557: 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
14784-457: 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
14960-487: The cultural and geopolitical shifts that occurred after World War I . Artistic movements and techniques associated with modernism include abstract art , literary stream-of-consciousness , cinematic montage , musical atonality and twelve-tonality , modernist architecture , and urban planning . Modernism took a critical stance towards the Enlightenment concept of rationalism . The movement also rejected
15136-746: The cultural institution as a whole is through its relationship to realism and the dominant conventions of representation." More explicitly: the Expressionists rejected the ideology of realism. There was a concentrated Expressionist movement in early 20th-century German theater, of which Georg Kaiser and Ernst Toller were the most famous playwrights. Other notable Expressionist dramatists included Reinhard Sorge , Walter Hasenclever , Hans Henny Jahnn , and Arnolt Bronnen . They looked back to Swedish playwright August Strindberg and German actor and dramatist Frank Wedekind as precursors of their dramaturgical experiments. Oskar Kokoschka 's Murderer,
15312-497: The daily lives of people, the human experience of time itself was altered with the development of the electric telegraph in 1837, as well as the adoption of " standard time " by British railway companies from 1845, a concept which would be adopted throughout the rest of the world over the next fifty years. Despite continuing technological advances, the ideas that history and civilization were inherently progressive and that such advances were always good came under increasing attack in
15488-399: 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,
15664-527: The dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously." However, the relationship of modernism with tradition was complex, as literary scholar Peter Child's indicates: "There were paradoxical if not opposed trends towards revolutionary and reactionary positions, fear of the new and delight at the disappearance of the old, nihilism and fanatical enthusiasm, creativity, and despair." An example of how modernist art can apply older traditions while also incorporating new techniques can be found within
15840-552: The desire for metaphysical truths, while understanding their impossibility. Some modernist novels, for instance, feature characters like Marlow in Heart of Darkness or Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby who believe that they have encountered some great truth about nature or character, truths that the novels themselves treat ironically while offering more mundane explanations. Similarly, many poems of Wallace Stevens convey
16016-443: 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 of Rising and Altenburg House – 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
16192-673: The development of railways starting in Britain in the 1830s, and the subsequent advancements in physics, engineering, and architecture they led to. A major 19th-century engineering achievement was the Crystal Palace , the huge cast-iron and plate-glass exhibition hall built for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. Glass and iron were used in a similar monumental style in the construction of major railway terminals throughout
16368-403: 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
16544-539: 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
16720-570: The effects of the Industrial Revolution and bourgeois values. Literary scholar Gerald Graff , argues that, "The ground motive of modernism was criticism of the 19th-century bourgeois social order and its world view; the modernists, carrying the torch of Romanticism." While J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851), one of the most notable landscape painters of the 19th century, was a member of the Romantic movement , his pioneering work in
16896-585: 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
17072-407: The embodiment of meaning within a naturalistic representation. At the same time, some modernists aim at a more 'real' realism, one that is uncentered. Picasso's proto-cubist painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon of 1907 (see picture above), does not present its subjects from a single point of view (that of a single viewer), but instead presents a flat, two-dimensional picture plane . 'The Poet' of 1911
17248-402: The established order. Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection undermined religious certainty and the idea of human uniqueness ; in particular, the notion that human beings are driven by the same impulses as "lower animals" proved to be difficult to reconcile with the idea of an ennobling spirituality . Meanwhile, Marx's arguments that there are fundamental contradictions within
17424-478: The face of the senseless slaughter, described in works such as Erich Maria Remarque 's novel All Quiet on the Western Front (1929). Therefore, modernism's view of reality, which had been a minority taste before the war, became more generally accepted in the 1920s. In literature and visual art, some modernists sought to defy expectations mainly to make their art more vivid or to force the audience to take
17600-552: 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
17776-413: 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
17952-461: The founding of the Society of Incoherent Arts. The theories of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), Krafft-Ebing and other sexologists were influential in the early days of modernism. Freud's first major work was Studies on Hysteria (with Josef Breuer , 1895). Central to Freud's thinking is the idea "of the primacy of the unconscious mind in mental life", so that all subjective reality was based on
18128-444: The fundamental changes taking place in technology, science and philosophy. The sources from which individual artists drew their theoretical arguments were diverse and reflected the social and intellectual preoccupations in all areas of Western culture at that time. Wassily Kandinsky , Piet Mondrian , and Kazimir Malevich all believed in redefining art as the arrangement of pure color. The use of photography, which had rendered much of
18304-685: 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
18480-514: 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
18656-650: The horse, so modernist design should reject the old styles and structures inherited from Ancient Greece or the Middle Ages . Following this machine aesthetic , modernist designers typically rejected decorative motifs in design, preferring to emphasize the materials used and pure geometrical forms. The skyscraper is the archetypal modernist building, and the Wainwright Building , a 10-story office building completed in 1891 in St. Louis, Missouri , United States,
18832-510: The idea that reality could be understood through a purely objective lens, a rejection that had a significant influence on the development of existentialism and nihilism . Around 1850, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (a group of English poets, painters, and art critics) began to challenge the dominant trends of industrial Victorian England in "opposition to technical skill without inspiration." They were influenced by
19008-426: The interactions between basic drives and instincts, through which the outside world was perceived. Freud's description of subjective states involved an unconscious mind full of primal impulses, and counterbalancing self-imposed restrictions derived from social values. The works of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) were another major precursor of modernism, with a philosophy in which psychological drives, specifically
19184-514: 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
19360-451: 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
19536-544: 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
19712-489: The mainstream in the first decade of the 20th century was still inclined towards a faith in progress and liberal optimism. Abstract artists, taking as their examples the Impressionists, as well as Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) and Edvard Munch (1863–1944), began with the assumption that color and shape , not the depiction of the natural world, formed the essential characteristics of art. Western art had been, from
19888-482: The material from which they are created. Debate about the timeline of modernism continues, with some scholars arguing that it evolved into late modernism or high modernism . Postmodernism , meanwhile, rejects many of the principles of modernism. Modernism was a cultural movement that impacted the arts as well as the broader Zeitgeist . It is commonly described as a system of thought and behavior marked by self-consciousness or self-reference , prevalent within
20064-411: 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
20240-478: 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
20416-540: The most important commercial show of the time, the government-sponsored Paris Salon , the Impressionists organized yearly group exhibitions in commercial venues during the 1870s and 1880s, timing them to coincide with the official Salon. In 1863, the Salon des Refusés , created by Emperor Napoleon III , displayed all of the paintings rejected by the Paris Salon. While most were in standard styles, but by inferior artists,
20592-413: 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
20768-502: The most visible changes of this period was the adoption of new technologies into the daily lives of ordinary people in Western Europe and North America. Electricity, the telephone, the radio, the automobile—and the need to work with them, repair them and live with them—created social change. The kind of disruptive moment that only a few knew in the 1880s became a common occurrence. For example, the speed of communication reserved for
20944-428: The music of the composer Arnold Schoenberg . On the one hand, he rejected traditional tonal harmony , the hierarchical system of organizing works of music that had guided musical composition for at least a century and a half. Schoenberg believed he had discovered a wholly new way of organizing sound based on the use of twelve-note rows . Yet, while this was indeed a wholly new technique, its origins can be traced back to
21120-456: The nature of reality. They argued that since each viewer interprets art through their own subjective perspective, it can never convey the ultimate metaphysical truth that the Romantics sought. Nonetheless, the modernists did not completely reject the idea of art as a means of understanding the world. To them, it was a tool for challenging and disrupting the viewer's point of view, rather than as
21296-416: 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
21472-409: The novel Murphy (1938). Then in 1939 James Joyce's Finnegans Wake appeared. This is written in a largely idiosyncratic language , consisting of a mixture of standard English lexical items and neologistic multilingual puns and portmanteau words, which attempts to recreate the experience of sleep and dreams. In poetry T. S. Eliot, E. E. Cummings , and Wallace Stevens were writing from
21648-553: The novelist Franz Kafka , poet Gottfried Benn , and novelist Alfred Döblin were simultaneously the most vociferous anti-Expressionists. What, however, can be said, is that it was a movement that developed in the early 20th century mainly in Germany in reaction to the dehumanizing effect of industrialization and the growth of cities, and that "one of the central means by which Expressionism identifies itself as an avant-garde movement, and by which it marks its distance to traditions and
21824-423: The ones they believe to be holding back progress , replacing them with new ways of reaching the same end. According to historian Roger Griffin , modernism can be defined as a broad cultural, social, or political initiative sustained by the ethos of "the temporality of the new". Griffin believed that modernism aspired to restore a "sense of sublime order and purpose to the contemporary world, thereby counteracting
22000-411: 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
22176-543: 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
22352-479: 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
22528-434: The poetry collection Leaves of Grass (1855–1891); and August Strindberg (1849–1912), especially his later plays, including the trilogy To Damascus 1898–1901, A Dream Play (1902) and The Ghost Sonata (1907). Henry James has also been suggested as a significant precursor to modernism in works as early as The Portrait of a Lady (1881). Out of the collision of ideals derived from Romanticism and an attempt to find
22704-491: The preface to his play Les Mamelles de Tirésias , which was written in 1903 and first performed in 1917. Major surrealists include Paul Éluard , Robert Desnos , Max Ernst , Hans Arp , Antonin Artaud , Raymond Queneau , Joan Miró , and Marcel Duchamp . By 1930, modernism had won a place in the political and artistic establishment, although by this time modernism itself had changed. Modernism continued to evolve during
22880-410: 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
23056-525: The priority of suggestion and evocation over direct description and explicit analogy," and were especially interested in "the musical properties of language." Cabaret , which gave birth to so many of the arts of modernism, including the immediate precursors of film, may be said to have begun in France in 1881 with the opening of the Black Cat in Montmartre , the beginning of the ironic monologue, and
23232-434: The products of consumer culture " kitsch ", because their design aimed simply to have maximum appeal, with any difficult features removed. For Greenberg, modernism thus formed a reaction against the development of such examples of modern consumer culture as commercial popular music , Hollywood , and advertising. Greenberg associated this with the revolutionary rejection of capitalism. Some modernists saw themselves as part of
23408-417: 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
23584-430: The representational function of visual art obsolete, strongly affected this aspect of modernism. Modernist architects and designers, such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier , believed that new technology rendered old styles of building obsolete. Le Corbusier thought that buildings should function as "machines for living in", analogous to cars, which he saw as machines for traveling in. Just as cars had replaced
23760-436: The rise of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, there were subsequent Expressionist works. Expressionism is notoriously difficult to define, in part because it "overlapped with other major 'isms' of the modernist period: with Futurism , Vorticism , Cubism, Surrealism and Dada ." Richard Murphy also comments: "[The] search for an all-inclusive definition is problematic to the extent that the most challenging Expressionists," such as
23936-442: 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
24112-463: The stock brokers of 1890 became part of family life, at least in middle class North America. Associated with urbanization and changing social mores also came smaller families and changed relationships between parents and their children. Another strong influence at this time was Marxism . After the generally primitivistic/irrationalism aspect of pre-World War I modernism (which for many modernists precluded any attachment to merely political solutions) and
24288-481: The study of light, color, and atmosphere "anticipated the French Impressionists " and therefore modernism "in breaking down conventional formulas of representation; though unlike them, he believed that his works should always express significant historical, mythological, literary, or other narrative themes." However, the modernists were critical of the Romantics' belief that art serves as a window into
24464-552: The subject in a greater context. Cubism was brought to the attention of the general public for the first time in 1911 at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris (held 21 April – 13 June). Jean Metzinger , Albert Gleizes , Henri Le Fauconnier , Robert Delaunay , Fernand Léger and Roger de La Fresnaye were shown together in Room 41, provoking a 'scandal' out of which Cubism emerged and spread throughout Paris and beyond. Also in 1911, Kandinsky painted Bild mit Kreis ( Picture with
24640-405: 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 his unfinished biography From Skien to Rome, Henrik Ibsen wrote about the Skien of his childhood: In my childhood, Skien was an extremely joyful and festive town, quite
24816-491: 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
24992-579: The support of their relatives in the family Blom . 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. 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
25168-424: The term "Expressionism" did not firmly establish itself until 1913. Though initially mainly a German artistic movement, most predominant in painting, poetry and the theatre between 1910 and 1930, most precursors of the movement were not German. Furthermore, there have been Expressionist writers of prose fiction, as well as non-German speaking Expressionist writers, and, while the movement had declined in Germany with
25344-403: 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
25520-582: The trouble to question their own preconceptions. This aspect of modernism has often seemed a reaction to consumer culture , which developed in Europe and North America in the late 19th century. Whereas most manufacturers try to make products that will be marketable by appealing to preferences and prejudices, high modernists reject such consumerist attitudes to undermine conventional thinking. The art critic Clement Greenberg expounded this theory of modernism in his essay Avant-Garde and Kitsch . Greenberg labeled
25696-433: 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
25872-473: The work of Manet attracted attention and opened commercial doors to the movement. The second French school was symbolism , which literary historians see beginning with Charles Baudelaire and including the later poets Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) with Une Saison en Enfer ( A Season in Hell , 1873), Paul Verlaine (1844–1896), Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898), and Paul Valéry (1871–1945). The symbolists "stressed
26048-401: The work of earlier composers such as Franz Liszt , Richard Wagner , Gustav Mahler , Richard Strauss , and Max Reger . In the world of art, in the first decade of the 20th century, young painters such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse caused much controversy and attracted great criticism with their rejection of traditional perspective as the means of structuring paintings, though
26224-578: The writings of the art critic John Ruskin (1819–1900), who had strong feelings about the role of art in helping to improve the lives of the urban working classes in the rapidly expanding industrial cities of Britain. Art critic Clement Greenberg described the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood as proto-modernists: "There the proto-modernists were, of all people, the Pre-Raphaelites (and even before them, as proto-proto-modernists,
26400-443: The years between 1900 and 1910. An important aspect of modernism is how it relates to tradition through its adoption of techniques like reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision, and parody in new forms. T. S. Eliot made significant comments on the relation of the artist to tradition, including: "[W]e shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of [a poet's] work, may be those in which
26576-485: 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
26752-449: Was Knight, First Class of the Order of Vasa . Modernism Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction , and subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and social issues were all aspects of this movement. Modernism centered around beliefs in a "growing alienation " from prevailing " morality , optimism , and convention " and
26928-460: 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
27104-558: 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
27280-413: Was a while later, and not so locally, that modernism appeared in music and architecture)." The poet Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal ( The Flowers of Evil ) and the author Flaubert's Madame Bovary were both published in 1857. Baudelaire's essay " The Painter of Modern Life " (1863) inspired young artists to break away from tradition and innovate new ways of portraying their world in art. Beginning in
27456-539: Was an excellent family arrangement." By 1830 her mother has transferred the Altenburg house and her business ventures to Knud, who was Skien's 16th largest taxpayer by 1833. Knud and Marichen had six children: Johan Altenburg Ibsen (1826–1828), Henrik Johan Ibsen (born 1828), Johan Andreas Ibsen (born 1830), Hedvig Ibsen (born 1831), Nicolai Alexander Ibsen (born 1834) and Ole Paus Ibsen (born 1835). Ibsen scholar Jørgen Haave argues that older Ibsen historiography
27632-641: 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
27808-477: 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. Older Ibsen scholars have claimed that Henrik Ibsen was fascinated by his parents' "strange, almost incestuous marriage", and he would treat
27984-457: 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
28160-443: 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
28336-520: Was expected from a girl of her social class. Henrik Ibsen confirmed on several occasions that he both modelled and named characters in his plays after his own family. In a letter to Georg Brandes , Ibsen wrote that his own family and childhood had served "as some kind of model" for the Gynt family in Peer Gynt , and in a letter to Peter Hansen, Ibsen confirmed that the character Åse, Peer Gynt's mother,
28512-416: 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
28688-442: Was first performed in 1935. Like Shostakovich, other composers faced difficulties in this period. Marichen Altenburg Marichen Altenburg was born in Skien as the daughter of the merchant Johan Andreas Altenburg (1763–1824) and Hedevig Christine Paus (1763–1848). Her father was a shipowner, timber merchant and owned a liquor distillery at Lundetangen and a farm outside of town; her mother had been born in Upper Telemark to
28864-656: 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
29040-474: 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
29216-540: 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
29392-404: 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
29568-759: Was premiered, in which he uses a montage of different styles, including folk music , popular song and atonality. Among his influences was Alban Berg 's (1885–1935) opera Wozzeck (1925), which "had made a tremendous impression on Shostakovich when it was staged in Leningrad." However, from 1932 socialist realism began to oust modernism in the Soviet Union, and in 1936 Shostakovich was attacked and forced to withdraw his 4th Symphony. Alban Berg wrote another significant, though incomplete, modernist opera, Lulu , which premiered in 1937. Berg's Violin Concerto
29744-422: 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
29920-428: Was still "progressive", it increasingly saw traditional forms and social arrangements as hindering progress and recast the artist as a revolutionary, engaged in overthrowing rather than enlightening society. Also in 1913, a less violent event occurred in France with the publication of the first volume of Marcel Proust 's important novel sequence À la recherche du temps perdu (1913–1927) ( In Search of Lost Time ). This
30096-540: Was the first to make full use of it in his short story "Leutnant Gustl" ("None but the brave") (1900). Dorothy Richardson was the first English writer to use it, in the early volumes of her novel sequence Pilgrimage (1915–1967). Other modernist novelists that are associated with the use of this narrative technique include James Joyce in Ulysses (1922) and Italo Svevo in La coscienza di Zeno (1923). However, with
30272-771: Was the largest and most ambitious Cubist painting undertaken during the pre-war Cubist period. In 1905, a group of four German artists, led by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , formed Die Brücke (The Bridge) in the city of Dresden . This was arguably the founding organization for the German Expressionist movement, though they did not use the word itself. A few years later, in 1911, a like-minded group of young artists formed Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) in Munich. The name came from Wassily Kandinsky 's Der Blaue Reiter painting of 1903. Among their members were Kandinsky , Franz Marc , Paul Klee , and August Macke . However,
30448-513: 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
30624-711: Was the year of philosopher Edmund Husserl 's Ideas , physicist Niels Bohr 's quantized atom, Ezra Pound 's founding of imagism , the Armory Show in New York, and in Saint Petersburg the "first futurist opera", Mikhail Matyushin 's Victory over the Sun —another Russian composer, Igor Stravinsky , composed The Rite of Spring , a ballet that depicts human sacrifice and has a musical score full of dissonance and primitive rhythm. This caused an uproar on its first performance in Paris. At this time, though modernism
30800-511: 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
30976-454: Was too high. The birth of a machine age, which had made major changes in the conditions of daily life in the 19th century had now radically changed the nature of warfare. The traumatic nature of recent experience altered basic assumptions, and a realistic depiction of life in the arts seemed inadequate when faced with the fantastically surreal nature of trench warfare . The view that mankind was making steady moral progress now seemed ridiculous in
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