The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ghosts, by Henrik Ibsen

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Title: Ghosts

Author: Henrik Ibsen

Translator: William Archer

Release Date: May, 2005 [EBook #8121]
Posting Date: August 6, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GHOSTS ***

Produced by Nicole Apostola

GHOSTS

By Henrik Ibsen

Translated, with an Introduction, by William Archer

INTRODUCTION.

The winter of 1879-80 Ibsen spent in Munich, and the greater part of the
summer of 1880 at Berchtesgaden. November 1880 saw him back in Rome, and
he passed the summer of 1881 at Sorrento. There, fourteen years earlier,
he had written the last acts of _Peer Gynt_; there he now wrote, or at
any rate completed, _Gengangere_. It was published in December 1881,
after he had returned to Rome. On December 22 he wrote to Ludwig
Passarge, one of his German translators, "My new play has now appeared,
and has occasioned a terrible uproar in the Scandinavian press; every
day I receive letters and newspaper articles decrying or praising it....
I consider it utterly impossible that any German theatre will accept the
play at present. I hardly believe that they will dare to play it in the
Scandinavian countries for some time to come." How rightly he judged we
shall see anon.

In the newspapers there was far more obloquy than praise. Two men,
however, stood by him from the first: Bjoernson, from whom he had been
practically estranged ever since _The League of Youth_, and Georg
Brandes. The latter published an article in which he declared (I quote
from memory) that the play might or might not be Ibsen's greatest
work, but that it was certainly his noblest deed. It was, doubtless, in
acknowledgment of this article that Ibsen wrote to Brandes on January 3,
1882: "Yesterday I had the great pleasure of receiving your brilliantly
clear and so warmly appreciative review of _Ghosts_.... All who read
your article must, it seems to me, have their eyes opened to what I
meant by my new book--assuming, that is, that they have any _wish_ to
see. For I cannot get rid of the impression that a very large number of
the false interpretations which have appeared