The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Master Builder, by Henrik Ibsen

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Title: The Master Builder

Author: Henrik Ibsen

Commentator: William Archer

Translator: Edmund Gosse and William Archer

Release Date: May, 2003 [Etext #4070]
Posting Date: January 9, 2010

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MASTER BUILDER ***

Produced by Douglas E. Levy

THE MASTER BUILDER

By Henrik Ibsen

Translated by Edmund Gosse and William Archer

Introduction by William Archer

INTRODUCTION.

With _The Master Builder_--or _Master Builder Solness_, as the title
runs in the original--we enter upon the final stage in Ibsen's career.
"You are essentially right," the poet wrote to Count Prozor in March
1900, "when you say that the series which closes with the Epilogue
(_When We Dead Awaken_) began with _Master Builder Solness_."

"Ibsen," says Dr. Brahm, "wrote in Christiania all the four works which
he thus seems to bracket together--_Solness_, _Eyolf_, _Borkman_, and
_When We Dead Awaken_. He returned to Norway in July 1891, for a stay of
indefinite length; but the restless wanderer over Europe was destined
to leave his home no more.... He had not returned, however, to throw
himself, as of old, into the battle of the passing day. Polemics are
entirely absent from the poetry of his old age. He leaves the State and
Society at peace. He who had departed as the creator of Falk [in _Love's
Comedy_] now, on his return, gazes into the secret places of human
nature and the wonder of his own soul."

Dr. Brahm, however, seems to be mistaken in thinking that Ibsen returned
to Norway with no definite intention of settling down. Dr. Julius Elias
(an excellent authority) reports that shortly before Ibsen left Munich
in 1891, he remarked one day, "I must get back to the North!" "Is that
a sudden impulse?" asked Elias. "Oh no," was the reply; "I want to be
a good head of a household and have my affairs in order. To that end I
must consolidate may property, lay it down in good securities, and
get it under control--and that one can best do where one has rights of
citizenship." Some critics will no doubt