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p In the person of Henrik Ibsen (born in 1828) we have lost one of the most eminent and most attractive writers of contemporary world literature. As a dramatist he probably has no peer among his contemporaries.

p Those who compare him to Shakespeare are guilty of obvious exaggeration, of course. As artistic works his dramas could not have attained the heights of Shakespeare’s dramas even if he had possessed the colossal power of Shakespeare’s talent. Even then they would have revealed the presence of a certain inartistic, I would even say, anti-artistic element. Anyone who reads and rereads Ibsen’s dramas carefully cannot fail to notice the presence of this element in them. It is thanks to this element that his dramas, full of totally absorbing interest in some places, become almost boring in others.

p If I were an opponent of ideology in art, I would say that the presence of the element in question in Ibsen’s dramas is explained by the fact that they are saturated with ideas. And this remark might appear at first glance to be very apt.

p But it could only appear so at first glance. Given a more attentive attitude to the matter one would have to reject this explanation as totally unfounded.

p What is the right explanation then? I will tell you. Rene Doumic rightly said that Ibsen’s distinguishing feature as an artist was "his love of ideas, i.e., his moral disquietude, his preoccupation with problems of conscience, his need to bring all the events of daily life into a single focus”. And this feature, this ideological commitment, taken in itself, is not a defect, but, quite the reverse, a great merit.

It is thanks to this feature that we love not only Ibsen’s dramas, but Ibsen himself. It is thanks to this that he was able to say, as he did in a letter to Bjornson of December 9, 1867, that he was in earnest in the conduct of his life. Finally, it is thanks to this that he became, as the selfsame Doumic puts it, one of the greatest teachers of "the revolt of the human spirit".  [418•* 

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p Preaching "the revolt of the human spirit" does not in itself exclude artistry. But this preaching must be clear and consistent, the preacher must understand fully the ideas that he is preaching; they must become part of his flesh and blood, they must not embarrass, confuse and hamper him in the moment of artistic creation. If, however, this essential condition is absent, if the preacher is not fully master of his ideas, and if, moreover, his ideas are unclear and inconsistent, the ideological element will have a harmful effect on the artistic work, it will make it cold, wearisome and tedious. But note that the guilt does not lie with the ideas here, but with the artist’s inability to understand them, with the fact that for some reason or other he did not become fully ideological. Thus, contrary to first appearances, it is not a question of being ideological, but, quite the reverse, of not being sufficiently ideological.

p Preaching "the revolt of the human spirit" lent an element of loftiness and attractiveness to Ibsen’s work. But in preaching this “revolt”, he himself did not fully understand to what end it should lead. Therefore, as always happens in such cases, he cherishes “revolt” for "revolt’s" sake. And when a person cherishes “revolt” for "revolt’s" sake, when he himself does not understand to what end revolt should lead, his preaching inevitably becomes vague.  And if he thinks in images, if he is an artist, the vagueness of his preaching is bound to lead to insufficient distinctness in his images. The element of abstraction and schematism will invade his artistic works. And this negative element is undoubtedly present, to their great detriment, in all Ibsen’s ideological dramas.

p Let us take Brand, for example. Doumic calls the morality of Brand revolutionary. And it is undoubtedly so, in that it “revolts” against bourgeois vulgarity and half-heartedness. Brand is the sworn enemy of all opportunism, and considered in this light he is very similar to the revolutionary, but only similar and only in this light. Listen to his speeches. He thunders:

p Come thou, young man—fresh and free—
Let a life-breeze lighten thee
From this dim vault’s clinging dust.
Conquer with me! For thou must
One day waken, one day rise,
Nobly break with compromise;—
Up, and fly the evil days,
Fly the maze of middle ways,
Strike the joeman full and fair,
Battle to the death declare!

This is quite well put. Revolutionaries willingly applaud such speeches. But where is the foeman whom we must

27*

420 “strike full and fair"? For what precisely arc we to declare battle to the death? What is this “all” which Brand in his ardent preaching sets against “nothing”? Brand himself does not know. Therefore, when the crowd calls out to him: "Show the way, and we will follow!" he can offer them only the following programme of action:

_p Over frozen height and hollow,
Over all the land we’ll fare.
Loose each soul-destroying snare
That this people holds in fee,
Lift and lighten, and set free,
Blot the vestige of the beast,
Each a Man and each a Priest,
Stamp anew the outworn brand,
Make a Temple of the land.

p Let us see what we have here.

p Brand invites his audience to break with compromise and energetically get down to work. What is this work to be? They are to "lift and lighten" the people and loose them from the "souldestroying snare" blotting the vestige of the beast, i.e., teaching all people to break with compromise. And what will happen when they do? Brand does not know, nor does Ibsen himself. As a result of this the fight against compromise becomes an aim in itself, i.e., it becomes aimless, and the portrayal of this fight in the drama—the journey by Brand and the crowd that is following him "over frozen height and hollow" is not artistic, but, perhaps, even anti-artistic. I do not know what impression it made on you, but it made me think of Don Quixote: the sceptical remarks which the weary crowd makes to Brand are most reminiscent of the remarks which Sancho Panza makes to his chivalrous master. But Cervantes is laughing, whereas Ibsen is preaching. Therefore the comparison is not at all advantageous to the latter.

p Ibsen attracts one by his "moral disquietude”, his interest in matters of conscience, the moral nature of his preaching. But his morality is as abstract, and therefore as lacking in content, as that of Kant.

p Kant said that if one asked logic what is truth and tried to make it answer this question, what emerged was a ridiculous picture that resembled one person milking a he-goat while another was holding a sieve under it.

p In this connection Hegel rightly remarks for his part that an equally ridiculous picture emerges when people ask pure practical reason what is right and duty and try to answer it with the help of the selfsame reason.

p Kant saw the criterion of the moral law as lying not in the content but in the form of volition, not in what we want but in how we want it. This law lacks all content.

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p To qnote Hegel, such a law "says only what should not be done, but does not say ... what should be done—It is absolute not positively, but ’negatively’; it is of an indefinite or infinite nature, whereas moral law should by virtue of its very essence be absolute and positive. Therefore Kant’s moral law is not moral".  [421•* 

p In the same way the moral law preached by Brand is not of a moral nature. By virtue of its emptiness it is completely inhuman, which is most evident, for example, in the scene where Brand demands of his wife that out of charity she part with the bonnet in which her child died and which, she tells us, she keeps close to her bosom and moistens with her tears. When Brand preaches this law, which is inhuman by virtue of its lack of content, he is milking the he-goat, and when Ibsen presents us with this law in a living image, he is like the man who holds a sieve under it hoping thereby to help with the milking of the he-goat.

p True, I may be told that Ibsen himself makes an important amendment to his hero’s preaching.

p When Brand is dying, buried beneath the avalanche, a “voice” cries out to him that God is a deus caritatis.  [421•**  But this amendment changes nothing at all. In spite of it, the moral law is still an end in itself for Ibsen. And if our author had presented us with a hero who preached on the subject of love, his preaching would have been just as abstract as that of Brand. He would have been merely a variety of the species to which belong the builder Solness, the sculptor Rubek (When We Dead Awaken), Rosmer, and even—strange to say!—the bankrupt merchant John Gabriel Borkman just before his death.

p In all of them their lofty striving merely testifies to the fact that Ibsen does not know what they are to strive for. They are all milking the he-goat.

p I shall be told: "But these are symbols!" And I shall answer: "Of course! The whole question is why Ibsen was forced to resort to symbols. And it is a very interesting question."

p “Symbolism,” says a French admirer of Ibsen,^^120^^ "is that form of art which satisfies at oue and the same time both our desire to portray reality and our desire to advance beyond its bounds. It gives us the concrete together with the abstract.” But, firstly, a form of art that gives us the concrete together with the abstract is imperfect to the extent to which the living, artistic image becomes lifeless and wan as a result of a dasli of abstraction, and, secondly, why is this dash of abstraction necessary? According to the lines quoted above it is necessary as a means of advancing beyond the 422 bounds of reality. But thought can advance beyond the bounds of a given reality—because we are always dealing only with a given reality—along two paths: firstly, the path of symbols which lead to the sphere of abstraction; secondly, the path along which reality itself—the reality of the present day—developing its own content with its own forces, advances beyond its bounds, outliving itself and creating the foundation for the reality of the future.

p The history of literature shows that human thought advances beyond the bounds of a given reality sometimes by the first path and sometimes by the second. It follows the first path when it is unable to understand the meaning of the reality in question and is therefore incapable of determining the direction of its development; it follows the second path when it manages to solve this sometimes very difficult and even insoluble task and when, to quote Hegel’s beautiful expression, it is capable of uttering magical words that conjure up an image of the future. But the capacity to utter "magical words" is a sign of strength, and the incapacity to utter them a sign of weakness. And when the striving for symbolism appears in the art of a given society, this is a sure sign that the thought of this society—or the thought of the class in this society that leaves its imprint on art—is unable to understand the meaning of the social development that is taking place. Symbolism is a kind of testimony to poverty. When thought is equipped with understanding of reality it has no need to enter the wilderness of symbolism.

p It is said that literature and art are a mirror of social life. If this is true—which it is without the slightest doubt—it is obvious that striving for symbolism, this testimony to the poverty of social thought, has its causes in this or that type of social relations, in this or that type of social development: social consciousness is determined by social being.

_p What can these causes be? This is the question I wish to answer, because it concerns Ibsen. But first I should like to furnish enough information to show that I was not wrong in saying that Ibsen, like his Brand, did not know what people who had decided to "break with compromise" should strive for; and that the moral law which he preaches is lacking in all definite content.

_p Let us now examine Ibsen’s social views.

p We know that the anarchists regard him as one of their own, or almost one.

p Brandes maintains that a certain “bomb-thrower” in his defence at court referred to Ibsen as a representative of the anarchist doctrine.  [422•*  I do not know which “bomb-thrower” Brandes has in 423 mind. But a few years ago at a performance of Doctor Stockmann in a Geneva theatre, I myself saw how sympathetically a group of anarchists there listened to the impassioned tirades of the honest doctor against "the compact majority" and against universal suffrage. And it must be admitted that these tirades really do remind one of anarchists’ reasoning. Many of Ibsen’s views remind one of them too. Remember how Ibsen hated the state, for example. He wrote to Brandes that he would willingly take part in a revolution aimed against this hateful institution. Or read his poem "To My Friend, the Revolutionary Orator”. It shows clearly that Ibsen regards only one revolution, the Deluge, as worthy of sympathy. But even then "the devil was tricked, because Noah, as you know, remained ruler of the waves”. Make a tabula rasa! Ibsen exclaims, and I shall be with you. This is exactly like the anarchists. One might think that Ibsen had read much of Bakunin.

p But do not hasten on these grounds to class our dramatist among the anarchists. Identical speeches had a completely different meaning in the mouth of Bakunin, on the one hand, and Ibsen, on the other. The selfsame Ibsen who says that he is ready to take part in a revolution aimed against the state declares most unequivocally that in his eyes the form of social relations is not significant, only "the revolt of the human spirit" is important. In one of his letters to Brandes he says that our Russian political system seems to him the best political form, because this system arouses the strongest desire for freedom in people. It follows that in the interests of mankind it would be necessary to perpetuate this system and that all those who seek to abolish it are sinning against the human spirit. M. A. Bakunin would not have agreed with this, of course.

p Ibsen admitted that the modern legal state has certain advantages compared to the police state. But these advantages are important only from the point of view of the citizen, and man has no need at all to be a citizen. Here Ibsen comes very close to political indifferentism, and it is not surprising that he, an enemy of the state and a tireless preacher of "the revolt of the human spirit”, willingly reconciled himself to one of the most unattractive types of state that history has ever known: it is a fact that he sincerely regretted the capture of Rome by Italian troops, i.e., the collapse of the secular power of the popes.

p He who does not see that the “revolt” preached by Ibsen is as meaningless as Brand’s moral law, and that this is what explains the defects in our author’s dramatic works, does not understand Ibsen at all.

p How harmfully the lack of content in Ibsen’s “revolt” affected the nature of his artistic creation is demonstrated most clearly by his best dramas. Take The Pillars of Society, for example. In many respects this is a splendid work. It presents us with a 424 merciless and yet artistic exposure of the moral rot and hypocrisy of bourgeois society. But what is its denouement? The most typical and inveterate of the bourgeois hypocrites castigated by Ibsen, Consul Bernick, becomes aware of his moral turpitude, repents of it loudly almost before the whole town and declares sentimentally that he has made a discovery, namely, that women are the pillars of society, to which his respected relative Fni Hessel objects with a touching earnestness: "No, freedom and (ruth—these are the pillars of society!"

p If we were to ask this respected lady what sort of truth she is searching for and what sort of freedom she wants, she would say that freedom means being independent of public opinion, and on the question of truth she would probably reply by referring to the content of the drama. Consul Bernick in his youth had a love affair with an actress, and when the actress’s husband found out that she was having a liaison with a certain gentleman and the business threatened to turn into a terrible scandal, Bernick’s friend Johan Tonniseri, who later went away to America and whom Bernick incidentally accused of stealing some money, took the blame upon himself. In the many years that had passed since then that basic falsehood in Bernick’s life had been covered by massive layers of secondary and tertiary falsehood, which did not, however, prevent him from becoming one of the "pillars of society”. As we already know, towards the end of the drama Bernick repents publicly of almost all his sins—he still conceals one or two things—but since this unexpected moral change takes place in him partly under the beneficial influence of Fru Hessel, it is obvious what sort of truth, in her opinion, should lie at the basis of society. If you play about with actresses, you must own up to it, and not wrongfully accuse your neighbours. The same with money: if no one has stolen your money, you must not pretend that you have been robbed. Such truthfulness may sometimes harm you in the eyes of the public, but Fru Hessel has already told you that with respect to public opinion you must be completely independent. Let everyone obey this noble morality, and the age of ineffable social welfare will soon dawn.

p A mountain has produced a mouse! In this fine drama the spirit has “revolted” only in order to calm down, by uttering one of the most trite and boring commonplaces. It can hardly be necessary to add that such an obviously childish resolution of the dramatic conflict could not fail to detract from the play’s aesthetic merit.

p And what about the scrupulously honest Doctor Stockmann! He is helplessly entangled in a series of the most pathetic and most blatant contradictions. In the fourth act, in the scene of the public meeting, he argues "on scientific grounds" that the democratic press is lying shamefully in calling the popular masses the true pith of the people. "The masses are nothing but the raw 425 material that must be fashioned into a People by us, the better elements.” Very good! But whence does it follow that “you” are the better elements? And here begins a whole chain of scientific argument, which in the doctor’s opinion is quite irrefutable. That which we see wherever there is life, is repeated in human society. "Just look at a common barn-door hen. What meat do you get from such a skinny carcase? Not much, I can tell you! And what sort of eggs does she lay? A decent crow or raven can lay nearly as good. Then take a cultivated Spanish or Japanese hen ... ah! then you’ll see the difference! And now look at the dog, our near relation. Think first of an ordinary vulgar cur—Then place such a mongrel by the side of a poodle-dog, descended through many generations from an aristocratic stock, who have lived on delicate food, and heard harmonious voices and music. Do you think the brain of the poodle isn’t very differently developed from that of the mongrel? Yes, you may be sure it is! It’s well-bred poodle-pups like this that jugglers train to perform the most marvellous tricks. A common peasant-cur could never learn anything of the sort—not if he tried till doomsday."

p Leaving aside completely the question as to what extent a Japanese hen, a poodle or any other variety of domestic animal can be classed among the “best” in the animal world, I would merely remark that our doctor’s “scientific” arguments challenge him. It follows from them that only those people whose ancestors have lived for many generations in fine houses, where they "heard harmonious voices and music" can belong to the better elements, the leaders of society. Here 1 would take the liberty of asking an indiscreet question: does Doctor Stockmann himself belong to such elements? Nothing at all is said about his ancestors in Ibsen’s play; but it is unlikely that the Stockmanns were aristocrats. And as for his own life, it has been for the most part the life of a proletarian intellectual, full of hardship. Thus it follows that he would have done far better to leave his ancestors in peace, as Krylov’s peasant once advised his geese. The proletarian intellectual is strong when his strength lies not in his ancestors, but in the new knowledge and ideas which he himself acquires in the course of his own life of labour.

p But the whole point is that Doctor Stockmann’s ideas are neither new nor convincing. They are florid ideas, as the late Karonin would have put it. Our doctor is fighting the “majority”. What caused the war to break out?

p The fact that the “majority” does not want to undertake the radical reconstruction of the bathing establishment, which is absolutely necessary in the interests of the patients.

p But if this is so, it should be easy for Doctor Stockmann to see that in this case the “majority” are the patients which pour into the little town from all over the country, whereas the town’s 426 inhabitants who oppose the reconstruction are in the minority in relation to them. If he had noticed this,—and, I repeat, it would have been very easy to notice: it stood out a mile,—he would have seen that in this case it was quite pointless to fulminate against the “majority”. But this is not all. Who made up this "compact majority" in the town, with whom our hero clashed? It consisted, firstly, of shareholders in the bathing establishment; secondly, of householders; thirdly, of newspapermen and printers trimming their sails to the wind, and finally, fourthly, of the town plebs, which were under the influence of these three elements and therefore followed them blindly. Compared with the first three elements, the plebs naturally formed the majority in the compact “majority”. Had Doctor Stockmann given this his esteemed attention, he would have made a discovery that was far more necessary to him than the one he makes in Ibsen: he would have seen that the true enemy of progress is not the “majority” against which he fulminates to the delight of the anarchists, but merely the lack of development of this majority, that is conditioned by the dependent position in which it is held by the economically strong minority. And since our hero talks anarchist rubbish not from ill-will, but again only because of lack of development, having made this discovery and thanks to it having advanced quite considerably in his development, he would have begun to fulminate not against the majority, but against the economically strong minority. The anarchists might then have stopped applauding him; but he would have found the truth which he always loved, but never understood because of his afore-mentioned lack of development.

p It is no accident that the anarchists applaud Doctor Stockmann. His thinking is marked by the same defect as their own mode of thought. Our honest doctor’s thinking is extremely abstract. He is aware only of the abstract difference between truth and error; in speaking of the poodle’s ancestors, he does not realise that truth itself can belong to different categories depending on its origin.

p Our serf-owners in the "age of great reforms" probably included people who were far more enlightened than their "baptised property”. Such people did not think that thunder was caused by the Prophet Elijah driving across the sky in his chariot, of course. And if it had been a question of the causes of storms, truth would have been on the side of the minority,—the enlightened serfowners,—and not on the side of the majority—the unenlightened serf “rabble”. But what if it had been a question of serfdom? Then the majority—the same unenlightened peasants—would have supported its abolition, and the minority—the same enlightened serfowners—would have cried that abolishing it would mean shaking all the most "sacred foundations”. Whose side would truth have 427 been on then? Not that of the enlightened minority, I think. A person,—or class, or estate,—is by no means always infallible in his judgment on matters that concern him. Nevertheless we have all grounds for saying that when a person,—or estate, or class,—passes judgment on a matter of concern to him, there is an infinitely greater chance that we shall hear a correct judgment on this matter from this person, than from another, albeit more enlightened man, in whose interests it would be to present the matter in a false light. And if this is so, it is obvious that when it is a question of social relations,—and, consequently, of the interests of different classes or strata of the population,—it would be a great mistake to think that the minority is always right, and the majority always wrong. Quite the reverse. Social relations have up to now developed in such a way that the majority has been exploited by the minority. It has therefore been in the interests of the minority to distort the truth in everything that concerned this basic fact of social relations.

The exploiting minority could not help lying or, since it did not always lie consciously, was deprived of the possibility of judging correctly. And the exploited majority could not help feeling where the shoe pinched, as the Germans say, and could not help wanting to mend the shoe. In other words, objective necessity turned the eyes of the majority towards the truth, and the eyes of the minority towards error. And on this basic error of the exploiting minority a whole, extremely complicated superstructure of its secondary errors has been erected, which prevent it from looking truth straight in the eye. This is why it would need all the naivete of Doctor Stockmann to expect from this minority a conscientious attitude towards truth and disinterested service of it.