This article is mainly a translation of “Et dukkehjem – kunstens hjem”, 31.07.2025.
A Doll’s House consists
of several layers. On the textual surface, it is a realistic contemporary drama
about a bourgeois married couple. Beneath the surface, it is about the
playwright Ibsen himself and his models, where aesthetics and references to
other literature and visual art are central. Both the bank director and his
wife, as well as the dramatist, live in a time of transition, where the ability
to adapt is put to the test. Ibsen emphasized that if one wished to understand
his plays, one had to read his earlier works. Few are aware of the significance
that Romanticism had for Ibsen’s writing. In Norway, the Romantic or National
Romantic spirit lingered longer than in the rest of Europe, partly due to the
process of nation-building. At the same time as Romanticism was in decline in
Europe, around 1850, it was enjoying its greatest triumphs in Norway. In the
spring of 1849, celebratory performances were held at the Christiania Theater,
which took the form of pure worship of the nation. The highlight was a tableau
vivant of Tidemand and Gude’s The Bridal Procession on the
Hardangerfjord; the famous Ole Bull appeared as the fiddler. Ibsen entered
the Norwegian theatre scene in the midst of nation-building, when patriotic
jubilation resounded.
Romanticism was a
golden age of art, and the artist was viewed as a natural-born genius. The
period produced unique works of art that will never cease to inspire:
Wergeland’s poems, H.C. Andersen’s fairy tales, the landscape paintings of
Gude, Fearnley, Cappelen, and Eckersberg. It is important to remember the
landscape painters who transformed Norwegian nature into enchanting scenarios.
Ibsen was passionately interested in visual art, and the dream of becoming a
landscape painter could only be driven out with the corporeal assistance of
Mrs. Ibsen. Although Asbjørnsen’s fairy tales are not art in the strict sense,
they deserve to be counted among the treasures Romanticism has left us.
Bjørnson’s peasant tales have also earned their place.
At its deepest
level, A Doll’s House is a religious drama. In an Ibsen play,
the signpost always points toward Golgotha. Nora nibbles on macaroons—the
“forbidden goods”—and feels an overwhelming urge to exclaim “death and suffering”
(of Christ, “død og pine”) so that Torvald will hear it. The passage contains,
in condensed form, the very core of Christianity: Adam and Eve ate from the
tree of knowledge, which God had forbidden. The pair were driven out of
Paradise so that they would not also eat from the tree of life. All descendants
of Adam and Eve inherit sin. The cross of Christ is a substitute for the tree
of life. The Christmas tree with its gifts and treats, placed in the middle of
Torvald and Nora’s living room, refers both to the tree of knowledge with its
forbidden fruits and to the tree of life, the cross of Christ. Christmas is not
for the guiltless, but for sinners. In this respect, it serves an important
function in Torvald and Nora’s home, though they fail to notice it.
A typical Ibsen
play features a hero or heroine who gives voice to the ideals of the time;
whether national romantic ideals such as dreamy elf-maidens, or national
idealist ones such as Lady Inger of Østråt, Haakon Haakonssøn, and Brand. A
Doll’s House conveys feminist and atheistic ideals. In the play’s
final scene, Nora delivers her epic lines about her ideal intentions, her own
innocence, and the sins of both her father and her husband (against her). Here,
she joins the ranks of icons such as King Haakon with his royal vision – a
distortion of the Creation and Babel myths – Falk with his tea-water speech,
Brand with his thunderous sermons, and Julian with his apotheosis, for example
in the tale of Minerva and the sun king lifting him up to the mountain’s peak.
However, Ibsen
never creates icons without also tearing them down. The dramatist’s double game
is revealed in his epilogue figure, Arnold Rubek. The sculptor, and “the Poet,”
is deeply amused by people who gape at his lifelike portrait busts, which are in
fact caricatures. There is an unbroken line from the laughter-seeking sculptor
back to young Henrik, who made cardboard dolls with splendid costumes at home
in Venstøp. His sister Hedvig recalled that while the young director sat moving
the cardboard dolls around, he would suddenly begin to laugh so hard that his
body shook. Not loudly, but quietly to himself.
In Nora’s case,
the irony emerges when one compares her pathos-filled defence of her selfless
deeds—she claims to have spared her dying father and saved her husband’s
life—with what actually happened: Nora was waiting for her father, who had no
money and therefore could not guarantee her loan, to die. Torvald was not
deathly ill, and no doctors came to Nora to say that only a trip south could
save his life. Nora’s claims have been refuted in a number of articles (e.g.
27.03.2025, 25.05.2025).
Nora is not a
fully rounded realistic character who can be defended psychologically. She
wholly believes in her own salvific deed. At the same time, she has carried out
a cynical scheme to obtain money for a wonderful trip to southern Europe that
lacked any medical justification. It is difficult to reconcile these traits in
a single character. Nora is, after all, one of Rubek’s portrait busts, so it
should come as no surprise that the apparent reliability of the façade is
contradicted by less noble characteristics. Ibsen believed that many
misinterpreted his later plays. When We Dead Awaken was
written as an epilogue to these plays, he explains, counting from A
Doll’s House onward.
In earlier
articles, I have examined in detail the similarity between Laura Kieler’s story
and A Doll’s House, particularly with regard to the journey to
southern Europe (e.g. 25.05.2025). On the surface, the Helmers travel to the south
so that the husband might be cured of a fatal illness, just as in Kieler’s
case. It is never made clear what kind of fatal illness Torvald suffers from.
This differs from Kieler’s story; Victor displayed symptoms of tuberculosis
(this is downplayed in Laura’s records from St. Hans Hospital). Another
difference between Torvald and Victor is the lawyer’s peculiar interest in role
instruction or the training of his wife, where he imposes a beauty regimen with
no room for deviation. Nora tells Kristine that Torvald takes pleasure in her dancing, putting on costumes and declaiming. Victor Kieler would hardly have instructed Laura in the
tarantella in such a meticulously classicist version, and she would never have
entertained by exposing the tops of her silk stockings. The tarantella motif
leads away from the play’s realistic level, in which Laura Kieler’s story plays
an important part, and into the aesthetic. One should nevertheless not rule out
the possibility that Laura Kieler, who had great ambitions as a fiction writer
and wrote in a fairly traditional Romantic style, lingered in Ibsen’s mind as
he worked on the play’s aesthetic dimension.
The Lawyer
Who Enforced the Justice of Beauty
Torvald’s
statements on aesthetics have a satirical tone. The satire is aimed at the
prevailing aesthetics of the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen during the so-called
Golden Age (ca. 1800-1850), which served as a model for Ibsen when he took his
first hesitant steps as artistic director at the Norwegian Theatre in Bergen
(cf. e.g. the articles of 09.03.2025 and 10.04.2025). The satire becomes clear
when the lawyer applies concepts from the ideal world of art to real life,
including his relationship with Nora. Torvald and Nora’s marriage plays out on
a stage, not only because they are de facto characters in a play, but also
because Torvald’s regime reflects Johan Ludvig Heiberg’s aesthetic demands.
According to the title of the play, the Helmers’ home is a doll’s house. The
metaphor points to a nursery, where dolls live and fairy tales are told. On a
deeper level, Ibsen’s use of “doll” alludes to his own play with dolls at
Venstøp. His sister Hedvig recalled that he often shut himself away in a small
cubicle near the kitchen. There he drew and painted cardboard figures, which
were mounted on wooden blocks so they could stand. The dolls were arranged in
different situations; it was like “a complete theatre.” Henrik also performed
puppet theatre with what were likely “store-bought dolls” for a local audience
on the farm. Just as the boy Henrik played or staged theatre at Venstøp, the
adult dramatist continues to “play” with dolls (i.e. dramatic characters).
A large part of
Ibsen’s grant-funded journey in 1852 was spent at the Royal Theatre, where he
met the director, Johan Ludvig Heiberg. He also experienced Johanne Luise
Heiberg, the Royal Theatre’s prima donna, on stage. But we can be fairly
certain that the young Norwegian, who was deeply interested in visual art and
had painted himself from an early age, also visited the spectacular
Thorvaldsens Museum, which had opened four years earlier, as well as the Royal
Painting Collection at Christiansborg. If so, the stipend recipient chose not
to report this to the board of the Norwegian Theatre, since gallery visits were
not included in his instructions.
Thorvaldsen’s
sculptures are mentioned several times in Paul Botten-Hansen’s unfinished
artist novel Norske mysterier (Norwegian Mysteries) from 1851. The novel is illustrated
by Ibsen, and the depiction of the hero Hastværk’s childhood calls to mind
Ibsen’s own engagement with books, paintboxes, and dolls at Venstøp. This
suggests that the two editors of Manden/Andhrimner, where the novel
was published, collaborated on the plot (cf. the post from 17.03.2018). It is
worth noting that Thorvaldsen’s idealized sculptures are described as
“prelapsarian.” This recalls Torvald’s aversion to the consequences of sin,
such as decayed teeth, the unpleasantness of the hospital room, and ungraceful
knitting movements.
In a number of
posts, I have argued that “Torvald” refers to Bertel Thorvaldsen, who was a
friend of Mr. and Mrs. Heiberg. Torvald’s aesthetic reflections mirror the
aesthetic regime of the Danish Golden Age theatre, which may be compared with
Thorvaldsen’s artistic outlook. Like Goethe, who demanded that actors conform
to the classical drama, Heiberg sought to exclude everything ungraceful or
offensive from the stage. The Danish ballet historian Erik Aschengreen writes
the following about the Heibergs’ influence on Danish cultural life: “Together
they brought a gospel of beauty into Danish culture, and together they sat on
the throne in the world of taste and ideality.” Mrs. Heiberg had transferred
her husband’s demand for perfect poetic form into her own art of acting,
something that influenced costume, diction, and movement alike. Aschengreen
writes about Mrs. Heiberg’s acting style: “She always moved her arms and hands
in accordance with the rules of antique beauty; she never assumed an ungraceful
position, and she enchanted even Thorvaldsen with her beautiful and consummate
plastique.” Mrs. Heiberg had entered the ballet school of the Royal Theatre at
the age of eight, where she had learned “a sense for the plastically
beautiful,” as stated in the Danish Biographical Encyclopedia.
Ibsen had noted
the resemblance between classical sculptures and the movements of the actors at
the Royal Theatre. Linguistically, there is a connection between sculpture and
artful movement. Plastik has two artistic meanings: shaping
figures out of soft material or sculpture, and the ability to carry oneself or
move beautifully. Ibsen attended performances at the Royal Theatre during his
grant-funded journey in 1852, when he undoubtedly also visited the Thorvaldsens
Museum. On stage he experienced both Mrs. Heiberg and the legendary Michael
Wiehe, who often performed opposite one another. Many years later, Ibsen
remarked to his first biographer, Henrik Jæger: “When I recall W.’s figures, it
is as though I were walking through a picture gallery full of antique statues.
Nothing but plastique! Nothing but grandeur! I have never seen anything like it
and shall never see anything like it again.”
Lawyer Torvald
Helmer struggles to transfer the aesthetics of the Golden Age theatre into his
domestic life. His goal is to shape the home so that it becomes as ideal as Mr.
and Mrs. Heiberg’s beautiful theatre. Aging, sickness, and death—the ugly,
rotten, poisonous, and impure, which are a natural part of human life after the
Fall—are banished. Doctor Rank, the serpent in the supposedly toxin-free doll’s
house, speaks of his old friend to Nora: “Helmer has in his fine nature such a
pronounced loathing for all that is ugly. I don’t want him in my sick room –.”
The libertine and syphilitic Rank describes his illness, which has reached its
final stage, in these words: “The thing itself is damned ugly. But the worst is
that so much other ugliness will come before it.”
Ibsen shows beyond
any doubt that Torvald is a fallen man. The supposedly spotless lawyer
frequented prostitutes before marrying (cf. the post of 10.06.2025) and keeps
the gambler/Nora (cf. the post of 18.12.2024). Despite his persistent
instruction and moral admonitions, Torvald reveals that he actually likes Nora
as she is: a temptress and spendthrift, superficial and deceitful. The lawyer
drains champagne and staggers down the stairs with his prey. Once inside the
doll’s house, he throws himself upon the mother of three, whom he imagines to
be a young innocent girl. This is a clear break with the Heibergian theatre and
Thorvaldsen’s plastique. One may ask how this scene could have been
staged at a time still dominated by the demand for ideality and Victorian
virtue. Ibsen’s text is highly explicit, realistic. The masquerade ball was
held at Consul Stenborg’s. The name points toward Stenborg’s Company – also
called the Stenborg Troupe or the Swedish Comedy Troupe – which performed plays
the cultivated theatre public considered coarse and vulgar (cf. the post of
21.03.2025).
In his
professional life as well, Torvald believes he follows noble principles and
disparages Krogstad, who committed a rash act and later took on assignments in
the grey loan market. Nora describes her husband’s professional ethics thus:
“To be a lawyer, it is such an uncertain way of living, especially when one
will not engage in other business except those that are fine and beautiful. And
of course, Torvald never wanted to; and I quite agree with him in that.” But it
is clear that the matter of auditing Nora’s father’s accounts was neither fine
nor beautiful, and that Torvald turned a blind eye to the irregularities. This
was probably the reason he received no promotion in the ministry. This is
discussed, among other places, in the post of 25.05.2025. Later I came to see
that yet another circumstance indicates that advancement in the ministry was
closed to him because of dissatisfaction with Torvald’s assignment. The task,
which required traveling to a municipal center to conduct a physical audit of
the accounts, points to a lower ministerial position. Torvald undoubtedly had
several officials above him. If he had done his work well, he might eventually
have had the chance to rise to a more administrative position – perhaps even to
the very top. There was indeed advancement in the ministry, but not for
Torvald.
Aschengreen’s
description of Mrs. Heiberg’s acting style calls to mind Torvald’s lecture to
Nora and Kristine on beautiful movement. In Act Three, Kristine sits in the
living room waiting for the Helmers to return from the masquerade ball at the
Stenborgs. Beside her lies some knitting. The couple enter; Nora has performed
a tarantella in a Neapolitan fisher-girl costume. It is Torvald who has had the
costume sewn, chosen it for the occasion, and instructed her. He urges Kristine
to take a good look at Nora: “I should think she is well worth looking at.
Isn’t she beautiful, Mrs. Linde?” Torvald recounts his wife’s performance:
“[…] She danced
her Tarantella, – was a tremendous success, – which she well deserved, –
although perhaps in the performance there was rather too much of the natural; I
mean, – a little more, strictly speaking, than could properly be reconciled
with the demands of art. But never mind! The main thing is, – she was a
success; she was a tremendous success. Should I then let her stay on after
that? Weaken the effect? No thank you; I took my little lovely Capri girl –
capricious little Capri girl, I might say – under my arm; a quick round through
the hall; a bow to every side, and – as they say in the romance language – the
beautiful sight had vanished. An ending must always be effective, Mrs. Linde
[…]”
In this speech, the bank director has, on a subtextual
level, been transformed into a theater director and his wife into an actress
(cf. e.g. the post from 18.12.2024). What is at stake is the art of the stage,
and the aesthetics can be dated to Romanticism, more specifically to the Royal
Danish Theatre during the Golden Age. Words and expressions such as “foredraget” (the
performance), “kunstens fordringer” (the demands of art),
and “det skønne syn” (the beautiful sight), to name a few,
point toward the director’s perspective. “Capripige” (“Capri
girl”), for its part, alludes to a favorite motif of Romanticism, especially
among painters –Italian women, often models, dressed in folk costumes. At the
Thorvaldsen Museum, the sculptor’s painting collection is also on display. It
includes two paintings of Neapolitan fisher girls, as well as one of a Roman
woman playing the tambourine. These Italian genre paintings later inspired
Scandinavian painters who had lived in Italy—especially in Rome, where models
in folk costume were plentiful – to create national folk-life images. Adolph
Tidemand, who stayed in Italy during his formative years, is a good example.
Among his sketches and paintings are several from Italian folk life, including
a fishing family and a Neapolitan fisherman. The distance between the Bay of
Naples and the Hardanger Fjord is not as great as one might think. The great
ideal among Scandinavian artists in Rome was Thorvaldsen. Tidemand met the
sculptor during his stay there in 1841–42.
The
Consumptive Lord Oswald and Corinna’s Healing Tarantella
It is worth noting
that, in his lecture on the proper performance of a tarantella, Torvald
introduces another art form: the novel. Torvald’s line is a description of
Nora’s tarantella performance, its conclusion, and the effect it has on the
spectators; the “language of the novel” provides a standard for how the ending
and the exit should be staged. A parallel description can be found in
Romanticism’s programmatic novel par excellence, Madame de Staël’s Corinne,
ou l’Italie (1807), which Ibsen borrowed in Anna Sophie Brandt’s Danish
translation while in Rome in 1864. The novel gives a detailed account of the
tarantella performed by the Italian poetess Corinna and the effect it has on
her audience. Corinna is the greatest artist in Rome, and at the beginning of
the novel she is to be crowned with laurel on the Capitol for her artistic
merits. This arouses the interest of the novel’s male protagonist, the Scottish
Lord Oswald.
Lord Oswald was
endowed with intelligence, good looks, and fortune. But his health was weakened
by profound emotional pain, and the doctors feared that his lungs were
affected. The Danish translation reads: “men dyb Kummer havde svækket
hans Helbred, og Lægerne frygtede for at hans Bryst skulle blive angrebet.” (“but deep sorrow had weakened his
health, and the doctors feared that his chest would be attacked.”) Ibsen
most likely relied on this translation. According to both the Danish version
and the French original, the doctors prescribed him the air of the southern
lands (l’air du Midi).
It is natural,
then, to bring both Lord Oswald’s medical history and Corinna’s tarantella into
an interpretation of A Doll’s House. The connection is reinforced
by the fact that Ghosts, which follows A Doll’s House,
is unmistakably written in dialogue with Corinne, ou l’Italie. In
other words, Ibsen’s dialogue with the French novel had already begun in A
Doll’s House. Daniel Haakonsen, in Henrik Ibsen – the Man and the
Artist, pointed out the similarities between Lord Oswald and Osvald Alving
in Ghosts (1881). He especially emphasized the novel’s
depiction of the opposition between Northern European and Southern European – or
Italian - worldviews, emotional life, culture, morality, and climate. Madame de
Staël’s heart lies with the Italian side. Haakonsen interprets Ibsen’s
depiction of a similar cultural and climatic contrast in Ghosts as
evidence that Ibsen, too, shared the cultural outlook of Romanticism’s French
standard-bearer. In the early 1850s, at the beginning of his career, Ibsen
co-edited the periodical Manden/Andhrimner (1851) with his
close friend Paul Botten-Hansen (and Aasmund Olavsson Vinje). Here,
Botten-Hansen’s unfinished satirical Künstlerroman Norske Mysterier was
published, with Ibsen’s caricatures of national romantic icons such as farm
boys, milkmaids, and summer-pasture huts. It is unthinkable that nearly thirty
years later Ibsen had become a spokesman for the ideas of Romanticism as
presented by a wealthy French society lady who could devote herself to the fine
arts and roam Italy at her leisure.
Lord Oswald is
undoubtedly among the models for Osvald, whether one interprets Osvald as a
tragic hero stricken with syphilis because of Captain Alving’s disgraceful
life, or because he himself had lived a blissful life with friends and fellow
artists in Paris, where free love was practiced. Before this, the art student
spent time in Rome, which was well known for its free relationships.
Lord Oswald’s
rapture over Corinna’s tarantella performance can thus be mirrored in Torvald’s
description of Nora’s. Haakonsen does not mention this, but in HIS (Henrik
Ibsen's writings) the following comment appears under “Tarantella”: “Also
in Madame de Staël’s novel Corinne, ou l’Italie (in Danish translation: Corinna,
eller Italien, 1824 –25), the tarantella plays an important role. The novel
sets Southern and Northern European culture in contrast, characterized
respectively by playful freedom and rigid conservatism, symbolized by Italian
and English culture. The dance here becomes an expression of Italian joie de
vivre.” Without being stated outright, the comment must be interpreted
to mean that the cultural conflict in the French novel, which Haakonsen sees
reflected in Ghosts, is also present in A Doll’s House.
This suggests that within Ibsen scholarship, perhaps due to Haakonsen’s
interpretation, a connection has been perceived between A Doll’s House and Corinne,
ou l’Italie. If so, it is a serious omission that the parallel between
Torvald Helmer’s and Lord Oswald’s diagnosis and cure has not been drawn into
the interpretation of A Doll’s House. The reason is likely that
such a literary borrowing would render the heroine Nora’s redemptive act a
literary construction, and thus not credible. Yet Ibsen’s feminist bravura
piece is a cleverly constructed edifice, with a realistic façade that leaves
the public gaping in astonishment.
At home in
Scotland, Lord Oswald had sunk ever deeper into depression, because he felt
that his way of life – an affair with a French woman – had contributed to his
father’s death. In other words, this is the North European (read: Protestant)
sense of guilt. The poor weather in the same place contributed further to his
decline. Following the advice of doctors and friends, Lord Oswald travels to
Rome to recuperate, where he recovers in step with his growing love for
Corinna. The Roman woman, who is in fact half-Scottish, entices the melancholy
Oswald to a ball (Book Six, Chapter One). She herself enters the ballroom,
while he remains standing outside. Through the doorway he sees the handsome
Neapolitan prince Amalfi engage Corinna for a tarantella, “en nydelig
neapolitansk Nationaldands” (“a lovely Neapolitan national dance”). De
Staël thus describes the tarantella as a Neapolitan folk dance. But Corinna
does not dance in national costume; rather, she wears a “smagfuld,
utvungen Baldragt” (“tasteful, unrestrained ball gown”). Nora, on the
other hand, dances the tarantella dressed in a Neapolitan fisher-girl costume,
which likely alludes to Miss Pätges’ (Mrs. Heiberg’s) costume in La
muette de Portici (cf. the post of 05.04.2025). The tarantella is an
Italian folk dance known throughout the country, especially in the south, and
its name is connected to the city of Taranto. Ibsen was well acquainted with
the history of the tarantella (cf. HIS).
Oswald observes
Corinna’s tarantella performance from afar, or with aesthetic distance. This
brings to mind Torvald’s remark that he keeps his distance from Nora when they
are out in company; in other words, he has observed Nora from afar when she was
“chasing and enticing in the tarantella.” True, this observation leads to a
violent arousal in Torvald; the Helmers, after all, are at a ball at Stenborg’s
(cf. the connection to the theatre company Stenborgs Sällskap). But
the “theater director’s” intent is, in the first instance, to ensure that his
Neapolitan fisher-girl does not transgress against “the demands of art,” namely
the strict aesthetic regime of the Royal Theatre. Thorvaldsen’s sculptures
embody this regime in flawless fashion, represented in the Helmer living room
by the porcelain objects on the étagère (cf. the post of 10.04.2025).
The description of
Corinna’s performance itself is given by the omnipotent author, but we also
know that the lord is watching it all from the doorway. Even before she begins
to dance, he is bewitched by her “Skønheds Tryllekraft” (“the
magical power of her beauty”). Corinna seizes the tambourine that the prince
hands her, swings it back and forth in the air, and begins to dance. All her
movements were enchanting and expressive, modest and yet passionate.
«Corinna var
saa indviet i alle de Stillinger, Oldtidens Malere og Billedhuggere afbilde, at
hun ved lette Armbevægelser, idet hun svingede Tambourinen snart over Hovedet,
snart i den ene Haand foran sig, medens den Anden med utrolig Behændighed foer
hen over de melodiske Bjælder, fornyede Erindringen om Herculanums
Dandserinder, og skabte en Mængde nye Ideer for Maler- og Tegnekunsten.»
(“Corinna was so
thoroughly versed in all the postures depicted by the painters and sculptors of
antiquity that, with light arm movements – swinging the tambourine now above
her head, now in one hand before her, while the other, with incredible
dexterity, glided over the melodic bells – she renewed the memory of the
dancers of Herculaneum and created a multitude of new ideas for the art of
painting and drawing.”)
The folk-dance
tarantella was often performed with wildness and flirtation, but Corinna
conforms to “kunstens fordringer” (“the demands of art”), the
very phrase Torvald so insistently tries to instil in Nora. Immediately after
the speech in which he describes his wife’s tarantella number follows the
contrast between the beautiful and the “Chinese” movement, represented
respectively by embroidery and knitting. In Corinna’s case, the “demands of
art” pertain to the visual arts: the ancient paintings (wall and vase
paintings) and sculptures. This coincides with my interpretation of the Torvald
character as a satirical portrait of the dramatist, stage director, and theatre
manager Ibsen, who remains captive to the aesthetics and ideology of
Romanticism. Here the stage of the Royal Theatre during the Golden Age is
central. The towering arbiter of style is Bertel Thorvaldsen, whose sculptures,
inspired by the beautiful Greek statues, served as models for the actors’
plastic art (cf. Ibsen’s statement on Michael Wiehe’s plastikk). It
is likely that this devotee of antiquity also studied Greek vase painting.
The Torvald
character shows Ibsen as the official supplier of national romantic and
idealist plays. From the mid-1870s, Ibsen’s plays began their triumphal march
across Europe’s stages. At this time, the dramatist was his own business
manager; he himself had to ensure the collection of fees from theatres and
publishers. In this sense, one might argue that the distance between a bank
director and a playwright was not so great; both managed the flow of money. One
would think that by now Ibsen had secured his income with plays about innocent
women sitting in mountain pastures awaiting legendary figures, medieval
Norwegian kings, and reactionary Roman emperors. But there was a snake in
paradise: Georg Brandes. Away with all that romantic rabble, the Dane thundered,
so forcefully that Ibsen must have jumped in his chair. The controversial
critic also urged women to revolt against men and other authorities – the
church and bourgeois society.
Just as Nora’s
tarantella at Stenborg’s costume ball makes a powerful impression on the
spectators, so too does Corinna’s tarantella at the Roman ball. But we must
bear in mind that Stenborg alludes to popular theatre, and that Ibsen is
parodying de Staël’s description of Corinna’s classically studied dance. As
Corinna herself felt, so too did all the spectators, just as when she
improvised (recited poetry extempore), played the lyre, or created tableaux
vivants:
«Corinnas
fortryllende Dands [udbredede] paa engang en sværmerisk frydefuld Stemning
blant alle Tilskuerne, og ligesom højnede dem til en idealsk Tilværelse, hvor
man drømmer om en Lykke der ikke findes her paa Jorden.»
(“Corinna’s
enchanting dance at once spread a rapturous, blissful mood among all the
spectators, and seemed to elevate them to an ideal existence, where one dreams
of a happiness that does not exist here on earth.”)
The tarantella’s
conclusion was also highly effective. Here the male partner was to throw
himself on his knees. Corinna whirled around him with lightning speed, raised
the tambourine with one hand, and with the other motioned to the prince that he
should rise. All the men present felt tempted to kneel before Corinna, just
like the prince. Only Lord Oswald stepped back a few paces, due to his Scottish
shyness. There is no doubt that Torvald is indebted to Madame de Staël’s
beautiful novelistic language when he describes Nora’s tarantella. The
authoress herself praised Thorvaldsen, whom she in fact believed to be German.
To her, his Jason appeared as though the sculpture had been
taken directly out of the works of the Greek poet Pindar, where Jason is called
the most beautiful among men.
The underlying
reference to Corinne, or Italy casts doubts on the medical
justification for the Helmers’ southern journey, and on the very nature of the
couple’s stay in Italy. It is worth noting that both in the novel and in the
play, several doctors diagnose the lord and the lawyer, respectively, and
prescribe a journey to the South. It is not unnatural that an English nobleman
of great means should consult several physicians, but Nora’s claim that the
doctors addressed her directly about Torvald’s diagnosis is utterly implausible
(cf. the post of 25.05.2025). Nora’s lie, compounded by her refusal to say what
deadly disease afflicts her husband, points to the subtextual dialogue with
Madame de Staël’s novel. Here too the diagnosis is vague – or literary. In both
Lord Oswald’s and Torvald’s case, it seems rather that it is the wondrous
experiences, not the Italian air, that bring healing.
When Laura Kieler,
lerkefuglen (the lark), turned up at
the Ibsens’ in Munich and told the story of the doctor who had recommended a
journey to southern Europe to save her husband’s life, it is not unlikely that
Ibsen thought: I have heard or read this story before. Whether Laura herself
had read and been influenced by Madame de Staël’s epoch-making novel must
remain an open question. Laura’s literary taste had not kept pace with the main
currents of the age, contrary to her views on the women’s question.
Nora’s reference
to the southern journey as a “vidunderlig dejlig reise” (“wonderfully
delightful journey”) does not rhyme with Torvald’s being “så dødelig
syg” (“so mortally ill”) (cf. the post of 25.05.2025). The
contradictory statements mainly point to two types of “Italian journey”: the
cure-journey for wealthy tuberculosis patients, and the cultural journey for
artists and the culturally inclined who could afford it. Geir Uthaug writes
in Romantikkens univers (The Universe of Romanticism)
that it was to Italy that the romantics (that is, the romantic artists) from
the North sought “to escape from moralism and narrow-mindedness, from rules and
prohibitions, from bad weather, illness, and cold.” The country was full of
cultural treasures from antiquity, the Renaissance, and the Baroque: sculpture,
architecture, and painting. Uthaug further notes that in the 18th century,
Italy was the destination of wealthy North Europeans and members of the
aristocracy.
The Artists’
Italian Journey
As far back as the sixteenth century, Italy was among the countries included in
the so-called Grand Tour, which young men of princely houses, the
aristocracy, and the upper classes were expected to undertake. In the
transition between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, enthusiasm for
Italy – and to some extent Greece – flared up among artists. Foremost among the
Northern European Italy-enthusiasts stood Bertel Thorvaldsen, whose father, the
woodcarver Gottschalk Thorvaldsen, was Icelandic. According to one tradition,
Bertel is said to have been born on a ship sheltered off the coast of Iceland.
Most famous among the artists who made pilgrimages to Italy was Goethe, who was
not Northern European but German. Already in 1786 the poet traveled to Italy, where
he stayed until 1788; the impressions from this journey are described in Italienische
Reise (1816–17).
As for Ibsen’s own
Italian journey, it may well be claimed that it saved his life, just as Nora
asserts in Torvald’s case. In the early 1860s the theatre director had turned
to the bottle and was, quite literally, on the verge of ending up in the
gutters of Christiania. An important reason was Ibsen’s desperate attempts to
manage the finances of the Christiania Norwegian Theatre. The director’s tricks
to make money flow into the theatre’s coffers were constantly met with
counter-demands for ideality from the board – and from the eternal apostle of
purity, Bjørnson. When the balance was nearing the bottom line, the practical
theatre man would offer farces, vaudevilles, and exotic dancing girls. But the
national purists wanted nothing to do with foreign women like Fräulein Bills or
Dobsen St. Louis; they wanted shepherd girls singing in the tongue of the
primeval forest or tragic heroines from the allegedly heroic Norwegian history
before the four-hundred-year night. The strain took its toll on Ibsen’s health,
and he fell ill.
The last three
years at the Christiania Norwegian Theatre proved a veritable annus
horribilis for the theatre director. Possibly there is a parallel
between the demand for properly noble national drama, which Ibsen faced from
the theatre’s board, and Nora’s description of Torvald’s selective choice of
“beautiful” legal cases. Torvald overstrained himself in the first year of
marriage, when he earned what money he could from the cases he managed to
secure as a lawyer. Nora thus tells Kristine: “To be a lawyer, it is such
an uncertain way to live, especially when one will not occupy oneself with any
cases except those that are fine and beautiful. And of course Torvald has never
wanted that; and on that point I quite agree with him.”
“Fine” and
“beautiful” are not adjectives that suit the description of legal cases, which
leads us onto the play’s aesthetic plane, where Torvald appears as theatre
director/playwright, trying with varying success to steer clear of what is raw,
vulgar, and ugly. Lawyer Krogstad is the spotless lawyer’s opposite: he is
sinful and takes on “unrefined” cases.
Krogstad seeks to
gain a position of power over Torvald in the Joint Stock Bank. “Nils Krogstad”
easily becomes “Nils Krogstav,” alluding to Bishop Nikolas with his crook or
curved staff in Kongs-Emnerne, The
Pretenders (1864). Nils Krogstad and Bishop Nikolas are engaged in the
same endeavour: they plot in order to prevent others from gaining too much
power. While Torvald represents Ibsen as the creator of idealistic theatre
figures, Bishop Nikolas / Nils Krogstad (read: Krog-stav, “crook-staff”)
embodies the satirist Ibsen, who tears them down from their pedestal (cf. entry
10.06.2025). The ultimate question is: Should human beings be portrayed on
stage idealistically, as “prelapsarian,” like Thorvaldsen’s sculptures, or as
fallen, as they are after expulsion and punishment for sin? Bishop Nikolas
quotes from Holberg’s Jacob von Tyboe, the comedy that gave its
name to “The Learned Holland,” the circle in which Ibsen was a member (cf.
entry 25.08.2017). Bishop Nikolas is a typical comic figure. Nora begins copying
out Krogstad’s loan document three weeks before Christmas Eve, on December 3.
That is Holberg’s birthday.
Several details
can link Bishop Nikolas to the comic playwright. Let us look at one of them. In
Holberg’s day, the sound of otherworldly soprano voices could be heard in the
great churches of Europe’s metropolises: the castrati. Poor families in Italy
would have their sons castrated before puberty in the hope that they might one
day bring home fame and money with their voices. In Holberg’s comic works there
is a rural parish clerk who illustrates this dilemma: impressive vocal power,
but no balls. This calls to mind the author himself: Holberg’s “voice” (i.e.
his comic works and books of popular enlightenment) delighted many, but he
could not satisfy or impregnate a woman; he was a bilateral cryptorchid (cf.
entry 13.02.2024). The greatest Enlightenment writer in Denmark and Norway was
also short in stature, his face girlish and without beard growth; puberty had
not fully set in. Bishop Nikolas, too, is a castrato. This is clear from a line
addressed to Haakon in Act Three:
“[...] I am eighty
years old, and still my desire is to fell men and embrace women; – but there it
went with me as in battle; only Will and Desire, robbed of power from birth; –
Lust’s seething Gift – and yet a Cripple! So I became a Priest; King or Priest
must he be who would wield all Power. (laughs) I, a Priest! I, a churchly man!
Yes, a churchly office had Heaven specially created me for – that of taking the
high notes, – singing in a woman’s voice at the great Church festivals. And yet
they up there demand of me – the Half-man – what they have the right to demand
of anyone who was given full capacity for his life’s work! [...]”
It was as a
national idealist, not a satirist, that Ibsen received a stipend and collected
funds, which made his Italian journey possible. It was freedom from heavy work
and unpaid bills that opened up the poetic vein. The Roman scenery with
classical art, ruins, baroque architecture, taverns with wine, and a generous
sun must certainly have been inspiring. In that sense, Torvald’s Italian
journey mirrors Ibsen’s own.
Typically
Chinese: Tea Water, Nodding Dolls, and Knitting
After the description of Nora’s successful tarantella performance, Torvald
steps into his office for a moment. When he returns to the sitting room, he
asks Kristine whether she has finished admiring Nora. Kristine answers yes, and
now she wishes to say good night. Suddenly, Torvald notices Kristine’s
knitting, and what follows is the lecture on the difference between the
beautiful and the “Chinese” movement. The bank director (read: the theater
director) recommends that Kristine should embroider rather than knit. She
wonders at this. Torvald then provides an explanation that breaks with
realistic drama; no bank director would bother about the aesthetic difference
between embroidery and knitting. The lines are a satirical exposition by a
theater director/instructor/playwright who professes allegiance to beautiful
Greek art – or Thorvaldsen’s plastique.
HELMER: Yes, for it is much more beautiful. Look here;
one holds the embroidery thus with the left hand, and then with the right hand
one guides the needle – thus – in a light, sweeping curve; isn’t that so –?
MRS. LINDE: Yes, perhaps so –
HELMER: Whereas knitting – it can never be anything but
ungraceful; look here; the cramped arms, – the knitting needles going up and
down; – it has something Chinese about it. – Ah, that really was a splendid
champagne that was served.”
The speech touches
on Torvald’s basic aesthetic stance, which goes back to an aesthetic that met
with increasing resistance among many artists toward the end of the 1870s: the
Danish-Norwegian Romanticism shaped under Bertel Thorvaldsen’s classicist dominance.
But as we see in Corinne, or Italy, the fascination with antiquity
also formed part of Romanticism in other European countries, and to a large
extent Romanticism overlaps chronologically with Neoclassicism.
The commentary
in Henrik Ibsens Skrifter (HIS) notes a literary reference for
Torvald’s aversion to “Chinese” knitting: Charles Dickens’ novel David
Copperfield (1849–50). The title figure describes the impression of
Mrs. Heep as she knits: she “worked away with those Chinese chopsticks of
knitting-needles.” It is possible that Copperfield’s description forms part of
the background to Torvald’s remark, in the sense that Ibsen was inspired by
Dickens. If one reads Mrs. Heep’s knitting in its larger context, a thematic
similarity to Torvald’s line emerges. Whether this is coincidental must remain
an open question.
It is quite
possible to associate knitting needles with chopsticks. But the actual process
is very different. When one eats with chopsticks, only one hand is used, and
the arm movement is free and relaxed. Chopsticks therefore provide a poor
explanation for Torvald’s “Chinese” knitting. That does not exclude the
possibility that chopsticks could be a natural first association –something
Ibsen was surely aware of. This is especially relevant today, when an older
meaning of Chinese has fallen into oblivion.
The Danish
dictionary Ordbog over det danske Sprog (ODS) records the
following: “som (haardnakket) opretholder forældede, besværlige ell.
omstændelige traditioner; ogs. om ting: bagvendt; indviklet” [“one who
(stubbornly) maintains outdated, cumbersome, or ceremonious traditions; also of
things: backward, complicated”].
The Riksmålsordboken notes: “(om
person) som opprettholder, lever efter gamle, innviklede eller ceremonielle
former og er uimottagelig for alt nytt; (om form, optreden, opfatning ell.
lign.) stivnet i uforanderlig gammel tradisjon (på lignende måter som
kinesernes livsformer efter europeisk opfatning skal være det)” [“(of
a person) one who maintains or lives according to old, intricate, or ceremonial
forms and is unreceptive to anything new; (of form, conduct, or opinion)
rigidly fixed in unchangeable old tradition (in the same way that the Chinese
way of life was perceived by Europeans to be).”]
This understanding
of Chinese goes back to the Age of Discovery, when Europeans
were simultaneously entering early modernity with rapid development in a number
of fields. The Chinese, by contrast, were thought to live much as they had done
for centuries; their innovations such as porcelain, paper, and gunpowder were
several hundred years old.
Ibsen uses
“Chinese” (kinesisk) twice: once in Torvald’s “knitting remark” and
again in the article “Endnu et indlæg i Theatersagen,” 2
(1858):
“[…] I shall
merely point out the theatre’s efforts at isolation in relation to the
interests that in that period have set the nation in motion; I will mention its
complete neutrality in the language controversies and its indifference toward
recruiting with the help of Norwegian forces. This system of seclusion, this
Chinese barrier theory, has in large part made the theatre a foreign
institution in relation to the people […]”
This “Chinese
barrier theory” (kinesiske Spærringstheori) must be understood to mean
that the Christiania Theater stubbornly clung to excluding the new national
drama instead of opening up to what had set Norway into lively motion. There is
no doubt that here Ibsen uses Chinese in the sense recorded
in Riksmålsordboken, which is also among the meanings listed in
ODS: rigid, old-fashioned, or backward. At the same time, it is natural to
associate barrier theory (Spærringstheori) with the Great
Wall of China (cf. the examples of kinesisk mur in ODS), which
physically walled off China from the outside world.
Ibsen refers
to Kinesermur (“Chinese Wall”) in Love’s Comedy (Kjærlighedens
Komedie) together with Thevand (tea water) and Kineserdukker (Chinese
dolls). The play is a satire of the romantic poet Falk and his muse Svanhild,
and it is not easy to grasp all the imposing metaphors, which upon closer
inspection turn out to be utterly nonsensical. The double-edged nature of the
pair comes out during a rendezvous in Mrs. Halm’s garden on a moonlit summer
night – halm [straw] being a symbol of transience, paralleling
“Helmer,” stubble. The lovers wander under trees whose branches are adorned
with burning “coloured lamps.” Falk exclaims in rapture:
“We have an hour,
Svanhild, for ourselves,
In the light of God and summer night’s stars.
See how they glitter through the leafy vault,
Like fruit on branches, seeds of the world-tree.”
The “stars”
glittering like fruit on the branches are undoubtedly Chinese lanterns,
probably made of paper, i.e. artificial light. This is Ibsen’s ambush attack on
the romantic poet. His next target is Brand – compare Ibsen’s
statement to Laura Kieler that Brand deals with aesthetics
(post of 28.01.2025). Torvald Helmer is not the first romantic aesthetician to
have his credentials revoked by Ibsen. Moreover, Love’s Comedy contains
numerous references to Det lærde Holland, which was aimed at the
“Holland” circle and hardly comprehensible to the general audience.
In short, it may
be argued that “Chinese” signified everything the Romantics
disliked. The list is long; here only a few adjectives shall be mentioned,
which may apply alike to people, concepts, and objects: closed-off, ossified,
rule- and tradition-bound, artificial, mechanical, and unoriginal.
Falk employs “Chinese
Wall” (Kinesermur), “Chinese dolls” (Kineserdukker),
and “tea-water” (Thevand) in various combinations, all
in a negative context. “Tea-water bacchanal” (Thevandsbakkanal) is
equivalent to “prose bender” (Prosasvir); Chinese thus
emerges as the very antipode of poetry.
It is reasonable
to assume a connection between Ibsen’s use of “Chinese” in Endnu
et Indlæg i Theatersagen and in A Doll’s House, though
there may be a shade of difference depending on the textual framework. In the
passage in question, Torvald reveals himself as a spokesman for the aesthetic
regime of Romanticism, a period when Chinese came to represent
the opposite of all that artists aspired to – above all, feeling and “nature.”
At the same time, we must remember that classical or neo-classical visual art
remained formative.
One of
Romanticism’s greatest poets, H.C. Andersen, can shed light on Torvald’s
aversion to Chinese knitting and Falk’s similar disdain for (Chinese)
tea-water, Chinese walls, and Chinese dolls. In the fairy tales The
Nightingale (1843) and The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep (1845),
malicious Chinese dolls and Chinese monstrosities are the subject. Andersen,
moreover, was among those who worshipped Thorvaldsen’s art, and the two became
close friends after the sculptor returned to Denmark in 1838. Bertel Thorvaldsen,
Johanne Luise Heiberg (Hanne Pätges), and H.C. Andersen formed a trio; all came
from the lower strata of society and rose to the top as stars – confirming
Romanticism’s belief in the natural genius.
As the Romantic
that Andersen was, he too worshipped nature; not, however, the raw wilderness,
but the idyllic wood and the enchanted sea. The contrast between the natural
and the artificial is the central theme of The Nightingale, where
the cultivation of artificiality at the Chinese emperor’s court is opposed to
the song of the natural, living nightingale. The splendid imperial palace is of
fragile porcelain, which one can scarcely touch. What is most highly prized in
China, particularly at court, are magnificent objects of dead material such as
porcelain, precious metals, and gems. In the palace garden, where everything is
contrived, silver bells tinkle on the most curious flowers. But then the
emperor reads about the nightingale in the forest beyond the garden. It is
brought to the palace, where it enjoys great success after moving the emperor
to tears.
A little later the
nightingale faces competition from a copy, an artificial nightingale, presented
to the Emperor of China as a gift from the Emperor of Japan. It was “a little
work of art that lay in a box, an artificial nightingale meant to resemble the
living one, but entirely encrusted with diamonds, rubies and sapphires; as soon
as the mechanical bird was wound up, it could sing one of the tunes the real
bird had sung, while its tail moved up and down, glistening with silver and
gold.”
It was not long
before the wind-up nightingale, with its built-in cylinders, received more
attention than the real one, who seized the chance to fly out of a window. The
Chinese thus preferred an artificial bird. If one opened it up, one could see
human thought displayed: it sang only a single tune – copied from the real
bird’s song – again and again, while its tail moved up and down, up and down.
Andersen underscores the monotonous, repetitive movement of the mechanical
bird. This has its parallel in the head movement of the Chinese emperor.
Many travellers
wrote books describing the beauty of the city, the palace, and the gardens. The
emperor sat in his golden chair, reading and reading: “every moment he nodded
his head, for he was delighted to hear the splendid descriptions of the city,
the palace and the garden.” When the court was gathered to hear the real
nightingale for the first time, the emperor nodded at the bird to make it sing.
Later, as the emperor lay deathly ill in his bed, heads emerged from behind the
velvet curtains, whispering of his deeds, both evil and good: “And they went
on, and Death nodded like a Chinaman at all that was said.”
The Chinese nod at
everything and have no opinion of their own; they are devoid of originality.
The same characterisation is found in The Shepherdess and the Chimney
Sweep. The tale takes place in a sitting-room where there is an ancient
carved cabinet. In the centre of the cabinet is a devil figure, which the
children call “The Goatslegged Major-General-Commander-in-Chief-Sergeant.” All
the while he stares at a dainty little shepherdess who stands on the table
beneath the mirror. Close to her is a small chimney sweep, her beloved. Behind
them stands a doll three times their size: an old Chinaman, of porcelain like
the pair of lovers. The Chinaman imagined himself the shepherdess’s
grandfather, with the right to decide her fate, and he could nod. He had nodded
to “The Goatslegged Major-General-Commander-in-Chief-Sergeant” when he proposed
to the shepherdess.
To make the story
short: the shepherdess and the chimney sweep flee. The Chinaman follows them
but falls to the floor and shatters into three pieces. The shepherdess regrets
their escape, and they return. The Chinaman has been mended by the
householders, but can no longer nod his head. Out of shame, he will not tell
this to “The Goatslegged Major-General-Commander-in-Chief-Sergeant.” The devil
figure cannot have his renewed proposal confirmed by the Chinaman’s nod. The
shepherdess is spared from moving into the dark cabinet, and the porcelain
lovers may remain together on the table as before. They blessed the Chinaman’s
broken neck and cherished one another until they too fell to pieces.
In The
Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep, the Chinaman represents something
negative: he seeks to prevent the fragile young couple from being united. He
does so by virtue of his size, age and supposed family ties to the shepherdess,
and by nodding – just as, according to The Nightingale, all Chinese
are in the habit of doing.
The Chinese doll
on the table beneath the mirror refers to a porcelain doll in Chinese costume,
with a head that can nod. When one touches or moves the doll’s head, it begins
to nod. This is the origin of the Scandinavian expression nikkedukke (nodding doll, meaning someone who agrees to everything),
and it seems that the first such dolls were made in Asia, possibly in China.
Later, Europeans began to produce nodding dolls, often in Chinese costume. It
is most likely a European doll that features in H.C. Andersen’s tale. Such
dolls the author would have encountered in bourgeois homes, where chinoiserie
was in vogue. Here nodding dolls were displayed on consoles in so-called
Chinese rooms, furnished and decorated in a chinoiserie style.
It is but a short
step from Chinese nodding to Chinese knitting. In both cases we are dealing
with a monotonous mechanical movement, up and down, up and down. This ran
counter to the Romantic ideal of movement, which was to be natural and unforced
– though not too free or unrestrained, let alone vulgar. Torvald’s lecture on
Chinese knitting follows immediately after his didactic commentary on Nora’s
tarantella, whose model is undoubtedly Corinna’s studied tarantella. Chinese
knitting, then, violates the plastic ideals of Romanticism. The interpretation
opens up the possibility of a connection between Torvald’s and David
Copperfield’s view of knitting as a Chinese occupation. The relevant passage
occurs in chapter 39.
Mrs Heep, mother
of the obsequious Uriah Heep, is constantly knitting. The needles are in
perpetual motion, as monotonous as the sand trickling through an hourglass. And
we may add: the needles go up and down, up and down. David did not know what
Mrs Heep was knitting; he was no practitioner of that art, but it looked like a
net. And while she pressed on with those Chinese chopsticks of
knitting-needles, she appeared in the firelight as a malevolent witch, who
would eventually cast her net over Agnes, the novel’s true heroine. “Chinese
chopsticks” must almost be described as a tautology: chop- derives
from the Chinese word kuai-tzu, “quick (sticks)”. Chopsticks are
originally a Chinese eating utensil, which gradually spread to other parts of
East Asia. “Chinese chopsticks”, an alliteration, underscores the Chineseness
of the sticks, and it is possible that Dickens, by using “Chinese”, was
pointing to the monotony of the knitting, carried out by a character the
protagonist held in contempt. Knitting, moreover, is often associated with the
prosaic, such as the need to put on woollen stockings and mittens in winter.
Torvald remarks of Kristine, who knits: “She is frightfully dull, that woman.”
It is highly
likely that H.C. Andersen’s The Nightingale and The
Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep form part of the background to
Torvald’s remarks about Chinese knitting. After the real nightingale has flown
away, the artificial one is displayed to the people one Sunday:
“[…] and they
listened to it, and they became as merry as though they had drunk themselves
tipsy on tea-water, for that is just so very Chinese, and everyone then said
‘oh!’ and raised aloft the finger known as the ‘lickpot,’ and then they nodded,
[…]”
The Chinese become
thoroughly intoxicated by the artificial nightingale, as though they had drunk
themselves merry on tea-water. Everyone waves their “lickpot” finger in the air
and nods. From this passage there undoubtedly runs a line to Falk’s famous tea-water
speech in Love’s Comedy as well as Torvald’s lecture on
Chinese knitting in A Doll’s House. “Tea-water” originally denoted
a drink in which boiling water was poured over tea leaves, later more commonly
referred to as tea. In time, however, tea-water also came to
mean something feeble or watered down, alongside its primary meaning of (tea)
drink. Andersen thus claims that it is so very Chinese to drink oneself tipsy
on tea-water, which he likens to the delight in the artificial bird. This
inevitably brings to mind Falk, who scornfully describes the company drinking
tea in the garden as a “tea-water bacchanal,” as the mood rises around the
table. He calls their chatter “prose bender.” The company has, in other words,
drunk themselves tipsy on tea-water, just like the Chinese in The
Nightingale. Their chatter is as prosaic as the artificial nightingale that
so delights the Chinese.
After Torvald has
remarked that knitting “has something Chinese about it,” he immediately adds,
in the same line: “Ah, that really was a splendid champagne that was served.”
This last phrase is an interpolation, seemingly unrelated to the rest of the
remark. So why does Torvald suddenly think of the champagne he has been
drinking, just as he is expounding on what is typically Chinese?
According to Nora,
Torvald always becomes so “merry” after drinking champagne. Rank comments:
“Well, why shouldn’t one have a gay evening after a well-spent day?” Rank takes
Nora’s “merry” in the sense of “jovial,” notwithstanding that her remark has a
double edge; Torvald involuntarily amuses others. Immediately after declaring
that knitting has something Chinese about it, Torvald recalls the champagne he
has drunk, as he becomes merry. This happened while he was watching Nora dance
the tarantella, and emerges as a counterpoint to the Chinese in The
Nightingale. After hearing the artificial bird, “they became as merry as
though they had drunk themselves tipsy on tea-water, for that is just so very
Chinese.”
It is a matter of
three parallels:
H.C.
Andersen: It is so
Chinese to make oneself merry on tea-water and to be delighted by an artificial
bird with a tail that moves up and down. The poet’s ideal is the natural
nightingale, which he himself conjures forth within the frame of poetry or
fairytale.
Ibsen: Falk, named after a wild bird of prey, a noble
metaphor, claims that the tea party is nothing but a tea-water bacchanal, where
the conversation is a prose bender. Falk’s ideal is poetry.
Ibsen: Torvald makes himself merry on champagne and
delights in Nora’s tarantella. He disparages knitting, which, he says, has
something Chinese about it, with the needles moving up and down. The only thing
missing here is that the knitter, the dull or prosaic Kristine, drinks
tea-water.
Chinese,
artificial nightingale, and tea-water are to be condemned, whereas the
romantic, a tarantella performed after the model of classical visual art, and
champagne are to be praised. This is Ibsen-satire of a high order.
During the famous
tea-water speech, Falk also speaks scornfully of Chinese dolls:
"Ak, mine Damer, hver i sin Natur
Har og et særligt lidet «himmelsk Rige».
Der knopped sig af Spirer tusind Slige
Bag Blyheds faldende Kinesermur.
Men Fantasiens smaa Kineserdukker,
Som sidder i Kioskens Ly og sukker,
Som drømmer vidt – saa vidt –, med Slør om Lænderne,
Med gyldne Tulipaners Flor i Hænderne –"
("Ah, my
ladies, each in her own nature
also has a particular little “celestial kingdom.”
There a thousand shoots sprout and bud
behind modesty’s descending Chinese wall.
But the little Chinese dolls of imagination,
who sit in the shelter of the kiosk and sigh,
who dream far – so far – with veils about their loins,
with golden tulip blossoms in their hands –")
Here the satire
has a double edge; Falk mocks the company, which he regards as prosaists, and
Ibsen mocks the poet, who is a poseur. Ibsen received much criticism
after Love’s Comedy; it was thought that the poet conveyed a
disillusioned view of marriage. This was because the satire at Falk’s expense
was not recognised. Ibsen told people to read the play again.
The satire of Falk
consists partly in the way he appears highly knowledgeable, yet misrepresents
things. Guldstad compares Falk with the braggart Jacob von Tyboe (“the
Brabantine Jacob”), “he in the Brabant conflict,” in Holberg’s comedy of the
same name. This, of course, was picked up by Ibsen and the other “the
Dutchmen,” the members of The Learned Holland. They were
particularly interested in Holberg. When Falk equips Chinese dolls with tulips
in their hands, this too is a message to the Dutchmen. The tulip is Holland’s
signature flower; Brabant belongs to historical Holland. Chinese dolls cannot
sigh, they can only nod, neither did they wear veil around their hips, but were
fully dressed. And if these figures were to hold a bouquet of flowers, it would
certainly not consist of tulips. Since Falk is so critical of the company’s use
of metaphor, which he continually mocks, it is fair to apply standards to him
as well. “Modesty’s falling Chinese wall” is also an example of one of the
poet’s absurd metaphors. If there is one wall in the world that does not fall,
it is the Great Wall of China.
I shall give one
more example, which shows the lack of vigilance among Ibsen scholars. At the
beginning of Falk’s tea-water speech, the company talks of the age of tea. Falk
declares: “Yes, it was known when the blessed Methuselah / leafed through his
picture book upon his stool –.” HIS glosses: “Falk’s dating
refers to a time when Methuselah was a little boy, i.e. when he leafed through
his picture book, and means that this must have been ‘a very long time ago’.”
But when Methuselah lived, one of the patriarchs of primeval time, who
according to Genesis lived 969 years, there were no picture books for a little
child to leaf through. Picture books for children were in 1862, when Love’s
Comedy was published, still rare and of recent date. A picture book
for a child in Methuselah’s time is an anachronism. It is possible that Ibsen
is alluding to the picture book in H.C. Andersen’s fairytale The Wild
Swans (1838), where it is told of the eleven sons of the king and
their little sister Elisa and her magical picture book. She “sat on a little
stool of mirror-glass and had a picture book, which had been bought for half
the kingdom.”
Torvald’s claim
that knitting has something Chinese about it points towards Falk’s, and
ultimately H.C. Andersen’s, references to Chinese products – Chinese dolls and
tea-water – as something prosaic. The perception was cemented during
Romanticism, when poetry, fairy tales, feelings, and freedom were cultivated.
Intoxication belonged to the vocabulary of the Romantics. But one could not
freely choose what one should be intoxicated by. National favourites might
include waterfalls, snow-clad peaks, dairymaids, the legend of the huldra, and
the fiddling of the water spirit; or, among Danish-Norwegian or European
commonplaces, Thorvaldsen’s Graces, Miss Pätges’s elf-girls, and Italian girls
with tambourines. Nor was it a matter of indifference which drink was to lead
to intoxication, often together with such iconic experiences: it was the wine
of the grape. Tea-water was taboo. All the greater was the prestige if the wine
was enjoyed under southern skies among Roman ruins and torsos together with
other artists – or “kamerater,” as they were then called.
