288
sented him (as the hero) in
Brand,
many years before
The Wild Duck.
There is no justification in the text
for playing Gregers Werle as a hand–
some young man. He has been up in
the mines, at the Hoidal works, for fif–
teen years, visiting the cottagers with
his "claim of the ideal." I take this
to mean th'lt he has been preaching
some sort of radical social gospel. His
father speaks of his "drudging away
at the works, year in and year out, like
the merest clerk, and refusing to ac–
cept a shilling more than ordinary
wages." The "countrified gray suit" is
in a stage direction. Gregers is filled
with self-hatred, which encompasses
even his own name: " 'Gregers,' and
'Werle' to follow--did you ever hear
anything so hideous?" And : "GREGERS
(shuddering).
I should feel inclined
to spit on any fellow with a name like
that." He would rather be a dog, he
exclaims, than be Gregers Werie. He
hero-worships the handsome, "poetic"
Hjalmar. "Good-looking he was, too,
the nincompoop--pink and white, just
what common girls like for a lover and
with his susceptible disposition and that
sympathetic voice of his," says Dr.
Relling, to Gregers, of
Hjalmar.
The ugliness that emanates from
Gregers is felt not only by himself
but by the other characters. "Well, and
so you can still stand it up there at
those disgustingly dirty works?" says
Dr. Relling. And: ". .. isn't it more
likely that you yourself have brought
the foulness with you from the mines
up there?" When he moves into the
Ekdal household as a lodger, he makes
what Gina twice calls "a filthy mess"
of his room. Ibsen's room too was called
a filthy mess by his wife, while Kierke–
gaard was very fastidious.
The only thing I see to connect
Gregers with Kierkegaard is "the sin
of the father,'' to which Kierkegaard
also alludes, darkly. But this is a regu–
lar Ibsen motif, figuring in
Ghosts,
.
Qf
course
1
but also in
Rosmersholm,
A Doll's House,
and
Pillars of Society.
And Gregers does not sound at all like
Kierkegaard's writing, while he sounds
precisely like Ibsen's own preaching,
whether it comes from the mouth of
Nora or Lona Hessel (in
Pillars of
Society)
or Rosmer. The idea of "a
true marriage" that shall not be based
on a Iie-Gregers' besetting idea-is
one-hundred-per-cent pure Ibsenism. It
appears as the doctrine of
Pillars of
Society, Ghosts, A Doll's House, The
Lady from the Sea, Rosmersholm.
Lona
Hessel, for instance, comes to "purify"
Bernick's marriage of the lie on which
it rests, exactly as Gregers comes to
purify the Ekdal marriage. The only
difference is that Lona is presented
as an admirable "courageous" person.
Kierkegaard never had any such no–
tions. He was not a social reformer.
The whole realm of the social appeared
to him unreal and absurd. Nor was he
a moral fanatic but a witty utterer of
paradoxes.
Gregers is a crazy fanatic (his
mother had "fits"), but his province
is wholly secular. He never makes any
allusion to God or religion and he
speaks of "wrongs," not of sins-the
financial wrong his father did old
Lieutenant Ekdal as well as the social
wrong he did Hjalmar by fathering his
illegitimate child on him. He has the
outlook of a crusading, muckraking
liberal bent on exposing "the interests."
As for Dr. Relling, he may be the
only sane person in the play but he
is also a sly old drunkard who has
made a mess of his life. He is certainly
no representative of humanism. He is
simply the opposite pole of Gregers.
The one believes zealously in reform;
the other thinks man is incorrigible,
a mass of vicious traits held together
by a "saving" lie. I do not consider
either of these polarized opposites to
be especially sane, but they may be
the poles between which Ibsen's mind
oscillated.
New York, N , Y .
Mery MeCarthy
I
