The wild duck
The Wild Duck (1884, orig. Norweg .: Vildanden ) is a play in five acts by Henrik Ibsen . It is one of the most famous pieces of Scandinavian drama . The play premiered on January 9, 1885 at the Den Nationale Scene theater in Bergen. It first appeared in German in 1887.
The protagonist of the play, Gregers Werle, returns to his parents' house after years. For a long time he stayed away from his father, the wholesaler Consul Werle. At home he meets his childhood friend Hjalmar Ekdal again, with whom he had also kept no contact. When he thinks he recognizes that his old friend is caught in a web of lies and intrigue , he wants to open his eyes. Confronted with the truth, Hjalmar should draw courage for higher things, for an ideal future. But Gregers not only destroys the life of Hjalmar, who is not up to Gregers' idealism , he also destroys the life of Hjalmar's wife Gina.
action
first act
The wholesaler Konsul Werle gives an evening party for a shapeless Norwegian provincial society . Gregers Werle, his son, an idealist and truth fanatic, worked for years in his father's factory in Høydal. Now he has returned and invites his childhood friend Hjalmar Ekdal to the evening party.
Hjalmar, a life unfit dreamer , reflected more bad than good as a photographer through. He is now married to Gina Hansen, who used to work for the Werles. The couple have a daughter, Hedvig, whose upbringing and maintenance are financially supported by Konsul Werle.
Gregers Werle is convinced that his father has two reasons for these payments:
- The Consul has a guilty conscience towards Hjalmar's father, who formerly was his co-partner. Old Ekdal was sentenced to prison in an unresolved affair in which the consul was also involved . Since his release he has worked as a simple clerk in the business. For old Ekdal himself, there is nothing better than cognac . “When Ekdal was released, he was a broken man who simply couldn't be helped. There are [...] people who only need [...] to get a few shot pellets into the bellows, then they dive down to the bottom and never come up again. "
- Gregers Werle suspects that Hedvig is his father's daughter and that he only married Gina to Hjalmar so that the child would have a legal father. Werle had also equipped Hjalmar's photo studio to take care of the small family.
Gregers falls out with his father and moves in with the Ekdals. He is determined to tell Hjalmar the truth: "Because now I finally see a task ahead of me that is worth living for." Soon he realizes who really runs the photo studio : Gina. Hjalmar dreams his time, neglecting his work. In fact, he doesn't really enjoy the photo work, he uses every opportunity to distract himself. In public he is awkward, without much knowledge and intellect, hardly capable of even small talk .
Second act
While Gina runs the photo studio and tries to offer her small family a “modest but comfortable” home with the few resources and possibilities available to her, Hjalmar wastes his time with an imaginary “ invention ” and goes with them his father “on the hunt” in a loft where he keeps a couple of tame animals between dried up trees . Sometimes they shoot a rabbit and imagine it is a bear . A tame, lame-winged wild duck, which Hedvig owns alone, is kept in this attic . Every now and then Hedvig “lends” the beloved wild duck to his father and grandfather when they “go hunting”.
For Gregers Werle, the illusionary attic world and the wild duck, which is only hunted for pretense , represent a symbol for the illusion and lie in which the entire Ekdal family lives. Therefore, he is determined to unearth the truth and bring down the building of lies.
Third act
The judgment of Hjalmar grows stronger: he is lazy , listless , uses every opportunity to distract, a quality he has from his father. He delegates his work to Gina and Hedvig. Hjalmar: “I generally leave the current work to her; because in the meantime I can withdraw into the living room and think about things that are more important ”, namely his life's work , “ to bring the name Ekdal back to honor and reputation ”, through an invention through which the trade of photography“ both an art that becomes a science ”. Then old Ekdal is allowed to wear his uniform openly again (and not just secretly in the attic), because "that's what all his thoughts and endeavors are after".
Old Werle shows up, wants to take his son with him, but he says no. Gregers wants to take Hjalmar for a walk , tell him everything. Gina and Relling (the doctor) want to hold him back.
Fourth act
Gregers reports to Hjalmar about the suspicion that his father could also be Hedvig's father. Gregers wants to help Hjalmar to make a fresh start. But all he achieves is the destruction of Hjalmar's illusions and his supposedly ideal world .
Hjalmar asks Gina about her relationship with old Werle. Although she admits to having an affair with him, she justifies her secrecy towards Hjalmar by saying that he would not have married her if he had known about the relationship. However, since she loved Hjalmar and wanted him, she kept the affair to herself. At that time Hjalmar was on the wrong track, but with the wedding he became a "good and kind-hearted man". The idealist Gregers had hoped that the love between Gina and Hjalmar would be strengthened and consolidated after this discussion.
But this hope is not fulfilled. His ideals become reality at a point where he would not have expected them: with his father and Mrs. Sørby, who the consul proposed to marry. The consul also states that old Ekdal should receive a pension for life and that the money should be paid out to Hedvig after her grandfather's death. Hjalmar sees this as proof that Hedvig is Werle's daughter. Hjalmar wants to say goodbye to his family, but doesn't even have the energy to do so.
Fifth act
Dr. Relling reveals his passion to Gregers : He is a doctor , and his cure for all people is to see to it that the "flaming of the lie of life [in people] does not go out". Old Ekdal's lie in life is his attic. “In the whole world there is no happier shooter than him [...] when he can crawl around among all the junk. [...] The rabbits that hobble across the ground are bears that he stalked. ”Why use the foreign word“ ideals ”, there is a local word for it:“ lies ”.
Dr. Relling doesn't want to tell Gregers how he wants to cure Hjalmar. When Gregers emphasizes how important it is that Hjalmar can face the truth, Relling says: “That would be the worst that could happen to him. If they take away the lie of an average person's life, they also deprive him of his happiness. "
Hjalmar wants to go and still stay, asks that they pack their things and make a camp for him. In him, the pride and the feeling of having been betrayed fight against the simple wish that everything should be the same again, that he could stay. Hedvig overheard the conversation between Gregers and Hjalmar unnoticed. Gregers thought that Hedvig had to make what seemed to her the greatest sacrifice in order to prove her love for her father. Gregers meant the wild duck. But Hjalmar had asked himself - very pathetically - whether Hedvig would be willing to sacrifice her own life for him. He no longer believes in her love for him.
When a shot sounds, Gregers thinks he knows the reason: Hedvig sacrificed the most valuable thing in her life, the wild duck, for his love. But when the two men rush to the attic, they find Hedvig dead on the floor. Dr. Relling realizes that Hjalmar cannot live without a life lie. This will also be evident in his mourning for Hedvig: “Before a year is over, Little Hedvig will be nothing more than a pleasant opportunity for him to indulge in touched phrases about her. [...] Then you will hear him chant about 'the child who was torn from the father's heart too early'. Let them see how he cured himself in emotion and self-admiration and pity for himself. [...] "
Stylistic devices
The entire drama works on a double floor. Ibsen relies on the following psychological effect: when one hears two diametrically opposed but logically founded facts in quick succession, one tends to take the first statement for the truth, while one either denies or ignores the second statement. An example is the following chain of associations :
- Consul Werle's eyes are getting worse and worse.
- Hedvig's father is supposed to be Werle and not Hjalmar.
- Hedvig's eyes keep getting worse.
There is a logical chain of facts here. The fact that Hjalmar's mother also had bad eyesight and that Hedvig's short-sightedness could therefore also be explained as the inheritance of the paternal grandmother is inferior , since the above other logical explanation was already given beforehand. In this way Ibsen lays the wrong track, which is additionally supported by the all too human greed for sensation . In the end, the author leaves the question of who Hedvig's biological father actually is. The truth or intention of the drama is different anyway - it reveals itself in the fifth act when the liberal doctor Relling says that society is only held together by a web of lies.
Ibsen also takes advantage of another trick that our brain can play on us in a gifted way. With previous knowledge of certain connections, new things can appear in a completely different light, just because the brain projects the previous knowledge into the new facts . This can be observed very well in the father-son conversation at the end of the first act, from which one believes that one can infer things that are not mentioned in a word.
A typical human trait is that you always want to see people you love in a good light. Ibsen distorts this quality into the grotesque : In order to maintain a beautiful image of her husband, Gina repeatedly finds an explanation for the fact that he does not work as one would expect of him. z. B .: "It goes without saying that Ekdal is something other than one of the ordinary photographers."
effect
In Thomas Bernhard's novel Holzfalls there is not only explicit reference to the play - there an actor joins the evening party who had given the Ekdal that evening at a performance of the wild duck - the topic of the mendacity and hypocrisy of a society is also central.
In Dag Solstad's novel Shame and Dignity (1994) , the realization that Dr. Relling in Ibsen's Wild Duck could, in combination with the ignorant reaction of the students, result in a life crisis with serious consequences for the protagonist, a Norwegian teacher.
literature
- Robert Hippe: Explanations on Henrik Ibsen, Ghosts and Wild Duck . In: Volume 178 by Dr. Wilhelm König's explanations of the classics . Verlag Bange, 2nd edition 1969
- Peter Krämer: Henrik Ibsen “An Enemy of the People” and “The Wild Duck”: literary interpretation and pedagogical-didactic evaluation . Lang Verlag, Bern 1985
- Käte Hamburger : Ibsen's drama in its time . Klett-Cotta Verlag, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 978-3-608-95665-8 .
- Hans H. Hiebel : Henrik Ibsen's psycho-analytical dramas: the return of the past . Verlag Fink, Munich 1990. ISBN 978-3-7705-2621-5
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Anmeldelser av Vildanden. In: The Virtual Ibsen Center. University of Oslo, accessed September 24, 2018 (Bokmål in Norwegian).
- ↑ Asbjørn Aarseth: Innledning til Vildanden. Oversettelser i Ibsens levetid. In: Henrik Ibsen's scrifter. Universitetet i Oslo, accessed on September 30, 2018 (Norwegian Bokmål).
- ^ Fritz Paul: The spread of Ibsen's dramas through translation . In: Translation . tape 3 . De Gruyter, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-017146-4 , pp. 2543 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed September 30, 2018]).