Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Heinemann Volume 4).djvu/32

 of the people were placed in an engaging light. The vaunted fisticuff-heroism was, in Ibsen's view, nothing but rawness, and the poetic proclivities of Norwegian youth appeared to him, in the last analysis, simply a very prevalent love of lying and gasconading. The Norwegians appear in the caricaturing mirror of this brilliant poem as a people who, in smug contentment, are 'to themselves enough,' and therefore laud everything that is their own, however insignificant it may be, shrink from all decisive action, and have for their national vice a tendency to fantastication and braggadocio." That Peer Gynt is a counterblast to national romanticism and chauvinism in general there can of course be no doubt; but I see no reason to suppose that Ibsen had Björnson's novels specially in view, or intended anything like a "caricature" of them. It is pretty clear, too, that Björnson himself had no such idea in his mind when he reviewed the poem in the Norsk Folkeblad for November 23, 1867. His long article is almost entirely laudatory, and certainly shows no smallest sign of hostile party-spirit. "Peer Gynt," says Björnson, "is a satire upon Norwegian egoism, narrowness, and self-sufficiency, so executed as to have made me not only again and again laugh till I was sore, but again and again give thanks to the author in my heart—as I here do publicly." Beyond remarking upon the over-exuberance of detail, and criticising the versification, Björnson says little or nothing in dispraise of the poem. On the other hand he says curiously little of its individual beauties. He never mentions Åse, says nothing of her death-scene, or of the Pastor's speech, and picks out as the best thing in the play the thread-ball scene (Act V. Sc. 6).

The most obviously satirical passage of the first three acts is the scene in the Dovrë-King's palace