Hedda Gabler

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Data
Title: Hedda Gabler
Author: Henrik Ibsen
Premiere: January 31, 1891
Place of premiere: Residenztheater Munich
people
  • Jörgen Tesman, State Scholarship Holder for Cultural History
  • Hedda born Gabler, his wife
  • Miss Juliane Tesman, his aunt
  • Mrs. Elvsted born Rysing
  • Assessor Brack
  • Ejlert Lövborg
  • Berte, Tesman's maid

Hedda Gabler is the title of a 1890 created drama in four acts by Henrik Ibsen . It tells of the situation of a wife at the side of her unloved and uninteresting husband and her longing for her ex-lover. The protagonist has a desperate and unpleasant influence on the fate of the people involved.

The play was premiered on January 31, 1891 in Munich in the Royal Residence Theater with Clara Heese in the leading role.

action

The play takes place in Oslo (then still Kristiania) in the Tesmans villa. The plot spans a day and a half.

Hedda, the daughter of General Gabler, and husband Jørgen Tesman have just returned from their honeymoon in Kristiania. Jørgen Tesman is a hardworking, pedantic man who during the six month trip mainly worked on a cultural studies book which he hopes will earn him a PhD and a professorship at the university. Hedda doesn't love Jørgen. She looks at him with indifference; he has no sense of Hedda's femininity. She only married him because she hoped that this marriage would secure a respected social position for her. Two utensils the couple keeps symbolically show the contrast between the couple: a pair of old slippers that Jørgen Tesman got from two old aunts who raised him; and a pistol from General Gabler's estate, a dangerous "toy" of Hedda.

Hedda realizes the futility of their marriage when she learns that Ejlert Løvborg is back in town. A few years earlier, Løvborg and Hedda had an extremely tense and intense love affair. The cultural scientist Løvborg had retired to the country as a private tutor after excessive alcoholism and worked there with the help of the married Thea Elvsted on a recently published successful book. If the book is a success, Løvborg could become a professional competitor for Tesman.

Thea has left her much older husband and followed Ejlert Løvborg. She comes to visit Hedda and her husband. Hedda is jealous of Thea's evident influence over Løvborg and tries to push her way between the two. She cleverly takes advantage of Thea's naivete, who helped Løvborg as a "comrade" in writing his book, and coaxes out of her secrets about Løvborg's life in the country. Another visitor, the lawyer Brack, reports to Hedda's husband that Løvborg has already completed the manuscript for his second book. This makes him a serious scientific rival for Jørgen Tesman.

Now Hedda sees her hour come. She is driven by the thought: “For one time in my life I would like to rule over a human fate.” Hedda is not interested in exercising this power over her husband, he has no value in her eyes. Løvborg, however, does. She gets him to go to a party with Tesman and Brack. Løvborg, unable to cope with his unprocessed memories of his relationship with Hedda, decides to give up abstinence and get drunk. The celebration turns into a feast. Hedda knew that Løvborg's behavior would result in a social fiasco and the destruction of his career opportunities.

The next morning, the desperate Løvborg told her that he was socially ruined and that he had also lost the manuscript of the continuation of his book. He claims to his friend Thea that he destroyed the manuscript. In doing so he symbolically destroyed any connection to Thea. Hedda does not tell him that her husband found the manuscript and given it to her for safekeeping. Instead, she encourages Løvborg in his feeling of hopelessness and hands him her pistol with the request that it be done “in beauty”. Then she burns the manuscript with the reference to the relationship between Thea and Løvborg: “Now I will burn your child, Thea! - Your child and Ejlert Løvborgs. ”She told Jørgen that she destroyed the manuscript to secure his and her future.

Ejlert Løvborg does not die a "good death". He shoots himself in the abdomen. The lawyer Brack recognized the pistol as Heddas, and with this knowledge he tried to blackmail Hedda. He wants her to be his lover. But Hedda doesn't want to risk a scandal. Not only disgusting life, but also the mundane death of Løvborg, she decides to take her own life.

While Hedda is playing the piano loudly in the next room and finally the shot sounds with which she ends her life, Jørgen and Thea are already in the process of reconstructing Ejlert Løvborg's book with the help of his notes.

title

Ibsen chose the heroine's maiden name for the title of the drama. He wanted to "imply that Hedda Gabler as a personality is more her father's daughter than her husband's wife".

Voices to the piece

  • “The basic problem is, I believe, always one, essentially undramatic: How does the Ibsen person, the artistic egoist, the sensitive dilettante with an abundance of self-observation, with little will and a great homesickness for beauty and naivete, behave, how does this person behave in life? I think the answer is very simple: actually he has no real place between people and he cannot do anything with life. That's why he's dying sometimes, like Julian, Rosmer, Hedda. Or he stands alone, which is almost the same: Nora , Stockmann. Or he lives on, lonely among people [...]. "- Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929)
  • “The fatal woman, the woman who becomes fatal for men who castrates her, destroys, but who also means truth and the highest ecstasy [sic!] For everyone who comes into contact with her , is a favorite topic, especially in the 19th century. Century - Lulu , Anna Karenina , the lady of the camellias . The fact that these evil demonic women mostly die horribly in the end, murdered or through suicide, perhaps has something to do with the fact that the artists who invented them are men who, out of fear and / and vanity, defeat their conquerors at least in a dream [... ]. Hurray, the wicked witch is dead! is the triumphant cry of Grimm's fairy tale , but also of the realistic playwright Henrik Ibsen in 1890, speaking of HEDDA GABLER. Ibsen, too, it seems, finds a woman's natural task of having children. But Ibsen, with his fearless search for truth, recognizes in the reactions to Hedda from the men in the play [...] the fear of a real confrontation with the nature of Hedda, the witch , the woman - the other being. The predator Hedda becomes the victim. The mighty Hedda is not confronted (like King Kong ), her nature is not recognized - she is evaded, she cannot find a partner who can withstand her, and she kills herself. "- Peter Zadek , 1990

Film adaptations

literature

  • Käte Hamburger: Ibsen's drama in its time. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1989.
  • Maria Deppermann (ed.): Ibsen in the European field of tension between naturalism and symbolism (congress files of the 8th International Ibsen Conference, Gossensaß, June 23-28, 1997). Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1998.
  • Christopher Innes: A Routledge literary sourcebook on Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. Routledge Publishers, London 2003.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ortrud Gutjahr: Nora and Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen: Gender scenes in Stephan Kimmig's production at the Thalia Theater Hamburg . Königshausen & Neumann, 2006, ISBN 978-3-8260-3288-2 , p. 76 .
  2. ^ In: Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Collected works in individual editions. 15 volumes, 1945–59, ed. by Herbert Steiner. Bermann-Fischer, Stockholm / S. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 1950
  3. ↑ Peter Zadek: The wild bank. A theater book. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 1990, ISBN 3-462-02067-6
  4. ↑ Hedda Gabler in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  5. ↑ Hedda Gabler in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  6. ↑ Hedda Gabler in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  7. ↑ Hedda in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  8. ↑ Hedda in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  9. ↑ Hedda Gabler in the Internet Movie Database (English)Template: IMDb / Maintenance / Unnecessary use of parameter 2
  10. ↑ Hedda Gabler in the Internet Movie Database (English)Template: IMDb / Maintenance / Unnecessary use of parameter 2
  11. ↑ Hedda Gabler in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  12. ↑ Hedda Gabler in the Internet Movie Database (English)