Buchanan on Ibsenism.

Evening Star, Issue 8530, 1 June 1891, Page 3

Buchanan on Ibsenism.

Mr Robert Buchanan never enjoys himself more than when he can toss and gore the sainted Ibsen, and he does it in such a way as to make the Ibsenites frantic ; for it must always be remembered that the critic who makes fun of the new prophet hurts the Ibsenites rather than Ibsen. Mr Buchanan here sums up his opinions uoon the Gabblers: —“ One of my critics has abused me roundly for describing Ibsen as “ a Zola with a wooden leg.” Another writer avers that • A Doll’s House ’ is the only play which has not “ bored ” him within the last few years, and adds (what is more to the point) that the nightly ‘'storm of discussion” over Ibsen’s * 1 ethics ” is a proof of the dramatist’s genius and originality. Now, as a matter of fact, nothing is eo easy as to outrage common sense, and so arouse discussion and opposition ; nothing is so difficult as to please, to refine, and to charm. A playgoer witnessing the great masterpieces of dramatic literature does not become polemical ; he carries away with him pathos, the solemnity, and the calm of life itself. He has been to a theatre, not to a debating room ; he has been enjoying a work of art, not a feverish and irritating platform controversy. It has ever been the aim of the great dramatists, from Sophocles downwards, to magnify the divine meaning of life, to dep'ct that truth which is beautiful and spiritualising. The mission of prosaists like Ibsen is the mission of dullards like Zola—to shock and to revolt us with the meannesses of life, and to assume that those meannesses most abound where religion and morality are most powerful. My callow critic is not merely disgusted with the modern dramatist; he describes the average home as a ‘ harem.’ the domestic affections of average men and women as stupid and conventional, the religious instincts of average humanity as instincts ‘ he grew out of before he was born.’ The same jaded and foolish creattire who in Ibsen’s Nora, a living woman representing woman m the abstract, would see in the banalities of ‘ La Terre.’ if produced upon the stage, a glorious lesson convincing us of the monkeydom of humanity. We want no such lesson, for we have had it of late years ad nauseam .”