Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 8).djvu/29

 proof that in Gregers the poet was laughing at himself.

To Hedvig, Ibsen gave the name of his only sister and in many respects she seems to have served as a model for the character. She was the poet's favourite among all his relatives. "You are certainly the best of us," he wrote to her in 1869. Björnstjerne Björnson said, after making her acquaintance, that he now understood what a large element of heredity there was in Ibsen's bent towards mysticism. We may be sure that Hedvig's researches among the books left by the old sea-captain, and her dislike for the frontispiece of Harrison's History of London, are remembered traits from the home-life of the poet's childhood. It does not seem to be known who had the honour of "sitting for" the character of Hialmar. Probably he is a composite of many originals. Moreover, he is obviously a younger brother of Peer Gynt. Deprive Peer Gynt of his sense of humour, and clip the wings of his imagination, and you have Hialmar Ekdal.

I confess I do not know quite definitely what Ibsen had in mind when he spoke of The Wild Duck holding "a place apart" among his productions and exemplifying a technique (for he is evidently thinking of its technical development) "divergent" from that of its predecessors. I should rather say that it marked the continuation and consummation of the technical method which he had been elaborating from Pillars of Society onward. It is the first example of what we may term his retrospective method, in its full complexity. Pillars of Society and A Doll's House may be called semi-retrospective; something like half of the essential action takes place before the eyes of the audience. Ghosts is almost wholly retrospective; as soon as the past has