The Project Gutenberg EBook of Little Eyolf, by Henrik Ibsen

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Title: Little Eyolf

Author: Henrik Ibsen

Commentator: William Archer

Translator: William Archer

Release Date: April, 2005 [EBook #7942]
Posting Date: August 4, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE EYOLF ***

Produced by Nicole Apostola

LITTLE EYOLF

By Henrik Ibsen

Translated, With an Introduction, by William Archer

INTRODUCTION.

Little Eyolf was written in Christiania during 1894, and published
in Copenhagen on December 11 in that year. By this time Ibsen's
correspondence has become so scanty as to afford us no clue to what may
be called the biographical antecedents of the play. Even of anecdotic
history very little attaches to it. For only one of the characters has a
definite model been suggested. Ibsen himself told his French translator,
Count Prozor, that the original of the Rat-Wife was "a little old woman
who came to kill rats at the school where he was educated. She carried
a little dog in a bag, and it was said that children had been drowned
through following her." This means that Ibsen did not himself adapt
to his uses the legend so familiar to us in Browning's _Pied Piper of
Hamelin_, but found it ready adapted by the popular imagination of his
native place, Skien. "This idea," Ibsen continued to Count Prozor, "was
just what I wanted for bringing about the disappearance of Little Eyolf,
in whom the infatuation [Note: The French word used by Count Prozor is
"infatuation." I can think of no other rendering for it; but I do not
quite know what it means as applied to Allmers and Eyolf.] and the
feebleness of his father reproduced, but concentrated, exaggerated, as
one often sees them in the son of such a father." Dr. Elias tells us
that a well-known lady-artist, who in middle life suggested to him the
figure of Lona Hessel, was in later years the model for the Rat-Wife.
There is no inconsistency between these two accounts of the matter. The
idea was doubtless suggested by his recollection of the rat-catcher of
Skien, while traits of manner and physiognomy might be borrowed from the
lady in q