A SOCIAL DRAMATIST.

Ibsen's Ideas.

Literary Socialism has been worshipping at the shrine of its great modern prophet— the Scandinavian dramatist, one of whose plays has been produced as " an academic
experiment" at the Novelty Theatre. Henrik Ibsen has not perhaps had the good fortune to win favor in the eyes of Mr. Robert Buchanan, but for all that he is recognised as the Socialist prophet of the north, fortunate in the loyalty of his admirers, if unfortunate, in choosing the drama as the vehicle of his views. His mission in life seems to be to sap and mine the conventional ideas which we have inherited from the French Revolution. His ambition, apparently, is to adapt the aspirations of that movement, which in its results has fallen so far short of the expectations of humanity, to the hard facts of nature and of life. Hence he pours a cold douche of irony over the facile and shallow enthusiasms of misguided democracies and misguiding demagogues, and demands for human society a new substance and a sounder interpretation than it obtained from the principles of '89. And both the substance and interpretation he and his disciples believe will come to us in the near future, when as Ibsen predicts, our present ideas— moral, social, and political— will fall into the dust, just as did those of our ancestors at the close of last century. But the revolution that is coming, according to Ibsen, will be a slow business, for it will have to organise the distribution of wealth and toil, not on the basis of equality, but of justice and mercy, and it will have to begin by revolutionising people's minds and characters rather than by revolutionising political institutions. "Mere democracy," said he recently to the working men's club at Drontheim, "cannot solve the social question. An element, of aristocracy must be introduced into our life. Of course I do not mean the aristocracy of birth or of the purse, or even the aristocracy of intellect. I mean the aristocracy of character, of will, of mind. That alone can free us. From two groups will this aristocracy I hope for come to our people— from our women and our workmen. The revolution in the social condition, now preparing throughout Europe, is chiefly concerned with the future of the workers and the women. In this place all my hopes and expectations; for this I will work all my life, and with all my strength." The central aim of Ibsen's dramatic writings is to illustrate the tragedy of life, which is developed whenever a noble will is flung into conflict with a mean and conventional social environment. His chief object is over to teach that, no matter what traditional morality preaches, there can be no lasting solution of the social problem that does not obey Nature and bow before her laws. In the greatest of his plays, " Ghosts," he illustrates this truth, by working out the tragedy of heredity. In "The Pillars of Society" he shows how hideous are the social conditions that tempt men to become cowards and criminals, by guaranteeing them the spurious absolution of conventional ethics.
 To him the progress effected within the last century is not progress so long as it leaves the workers of the world in their present unsatisfactory condition. It were thus bootless to talk to him of the triumphs of invention and science, for he would point to the sorrows of great cities, and ask if we can justly pride ourselves on having made such successful efforts to increase the production of wealth, when we have failed so completely to secure for those who bore the brunt of the toil a tangible share of what they produced. When Consul Bernick, in " The Pillars of Society, " by force of circumstances that act on a will held in solution by a life-less code of morals, becomes a snug and respectable ship-knacker, and taunts his old foreman Aune with hostility to the use of some new machines in the shipyard, the effect of which may be the dismissal of numbers of men, he states a case that few English Socialists would dare to meet. But Ibsen does not shrink from meeting it. " Yes," replies Aune, I am afraid for the many whom the machinery will rob of their daily bread. You often talk of care for the community, consul ; but it seems to me that the community, too, has its duties. How dare science and capital set all this new mechanism to work before the community has educated a generation that can use it? " In other words, are "the classes" doing their duty to the world by concentrating all their energies on the rapid accumulation of wealth, quite regardless of the effect it may have on the well-being of the world's workers, and utterly ignoring the equally important problem of fairly and justly distributing the riches so accumulated? Is the inventiveness of man to be entirely and for ever absorbed in contriving means for increasing production ? Is it never to turn, even for a moment, to the contrivance of social machinery for distributing wealth so that the comfort, happiness, and leisure of the workers will not diminish, but grow pari passu with the growth of the world's opulence ? Those are questions that this and many other passages in Ibsen's dramas suggest to the brooding pessimism of the rising generation, for whom the shibboleths and formulas of '89 have long lost their charm. But that which is now crooked will not be set right suddenly. As we read Ibsen's teaching it will, in his opinion, be set right by evolution rather than revolution— by a process of change in the inner nature of man — long, slow, gradual, but sure and resistless as the operations of Nature herself. For us who inherit the broken ideals and idols of '89, there is now, according to Ibsenism, but little left save the work of preparing our children by precept, by example, by the education of the heart — which is ever the highest mission of woman — for bearing their part in the disorganising and reorganising struggles of the coming time. "Ah!" says Dr. Stockman in , " An Enemy of Society " to his prim, self-satisfied bourgeois brother, the burgomaster, "doesn't it do me good to see the young people eat? Always hungry! They must eat ! They need strength ! It's they who have to stir up the ferment in the after-time, Peter." Poor Peter, amazed that such a suggestion can be made in a world that is so pleasant for burgomasters, asks, in perplexity, what it is that is going to be stirred up. But for that, replies the doctor, we must ask the young people when the time comes — and of course few of us will be able to put the question, unless we can make our voices heard from under the daisies.

Australian Star (Sydney, NSW : 1887 - 1909), Tuesday 20 August 1889, page 3