When we dead awaken

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Title page of the Norwegian manuscript from 1899.

When we dead awaken. A dramatic epilogue ( Når vi døde vågner. En dramatisk epilog ) is the title of a 3-act drama by the Norwegian writer and playwright Henrik Ibsen . It is his last drama before his death in 1906. It was first printed on December 19, 1899 by Gyldendalske Boghandel (F. Hegel & Sohn) in all three Scandinavian capitals ( Copenhagen , Oslo , Stockholm ). On January 26, 1900 the play was premiered at the Hoftheater in Stuttgart , the German first edition of the play followed in the same year in a joint edition by S. Fischer Verlag Berlin and Verlag Gyldendalske Boghandel (F. Hegel & Sohn).

Emergence

After Ibsen's previous play, John Gabriel Borkman (1896), three years passed before he published a new one. The planning of “When we dead awake” probably began in the summer of 1897, as he reported about it in a letter to Georg Brandes. In the draft, the title of the work was initially “The Day of Resurrection”, then it was changed to “When the dead awaken” until the final “When we dead awake”. What Ibsen writes to Brandes in his letter suggests that Rubek Ibsen himself can be recognized in the main character . Like Rubek, Ibsen had returned to his home country Norway after a long period abroad and no longer felt at home there. The professions of the two are different, but writers and sculptors remain in the artistic field. Apart from these similarities, it is believed that the love story between Rubek and Irene also has a biographical background. Henrik Ibsen is said to have been inspired to write this work by his last lover, the Swedish writer Rosa Fitinghoff .

Meaning of the epilogue

The subtitle A dramatic epilogue indicates that the piece is thematically related to the previous work and concludes it. Ibsen makes this clear in a foreword to the Norwegian edition of his complete works (1898), in which he calls on the reader to understand his dramatic work as a whole and each of his pieces as part of the whole. The question remains as to which of the preceding pieces the whole thing begins. Ibsen once mentioned that the series that ends with the “Epilogue” begins with Master Builder Solness ; With this, When We Dead Awake, the series Baumeister Solness, Klein Eyolf and John Gabriel Borkman would close, which deals more or less with the problems of an idealistic calling, human responsibility and love. On another occasion Ibsen had the series begin twenty years earlier with A Doll's House , which in turn could be justified by the fact that the main characters Nora in A Doll's House and Irene in When We Dead Awake are very close. Nora, who awakens from her pseudo-life in the doll's house and faces reality, is very similar to the pure, immaculate girl that Rubek creates in his work of art "The Resurrection", for which Irene was the model. So Nora could correspond to Irene from back then.

people

The characters of the work, shown in a drawing by Edvard Brandes , 1906.
  • Professor Arnold Rubek , sculptor
  • Mrs. Maja Rubek , his wife
  • The inspector of the bath
  • Landowner Ulfheijm
  • Irene , a traveling lady
  • A deaconess
  • Servants, bathers and children

action

first act

Professor Rubek and Mrs. Maja are sitting in the park of a bathing hotel. You have returned home after four years, but you no longer feel comfortable there. The work that brought the sculptor Rubek to worldwide fame is “The Resurrection”, embodied by a young woman who awakens from her death sleep. It remained his only special work. Maja reminds Rubek of his promise to take her up a mountain to show her the glories of the world, which he never did. The inspector joins them. Rubek tells him that last night he saw a light figure followed by a dark shadow. Before the inspector can give him an explanation, the figure appears again and Rubek recognizes a slim lady dressed in white accompanied by a deaconess in black. The landowner Ulfhejm then appears and invites Maja and Rubek on a hike into the mountains. He enthuses Maja and wants to show her how his "best friends" (his dogs) eat away bones. When they leave, Rubek goes to the lady who he immediately recognizes as Irene. Irene had been a model for his masterpiece "The Resurrection". After the sculpture was completed, Irene left Rubek because he saw in her no more than a model, but she loved him. He lost his creative power through their disappearance. Irene had meanwhile been married twice and in a mental institution. She describes herself as dead and accuses Rubek of being responsible for her death. Rubek had promised her that he would climb a summit with her to show her the glories of the world. He hadn't realized it with her either. Maja comes back and the two ladies get to know each other. Maja announces her decision to go into the mountains with Ulfhejm. Rubek and Irene also arrange to meet for a second time in the mountains.

Second act

On a high mountain plateau where Rubek is waiting for Irene, he meets Maja, who has been looking for him. She was on the hunt with Ulfhejm and in the morning she decides to go back up into the mountains with him. Rubek tells her who Irene is and what significance she has for him and his artistic work. Maja, for her part, is just as unhappy in her relationship with Rubek; she says he took her up a mountain, but he did not show her the glories of the world. Both have found their coexistence in the past five years as monotonous and bleak and finally parted ways by mutual agreement. Then Irene comes to the plateau and sits down next to Rubek. He reveals to her his remorse for the wasted life and his guilty conscience towards her. Irene illustrates the hatred she had for the indifferent artist in Rubek, and at the same time the love she feels for their child - as she calls the sculpture "The Resurrection", as Rubek called it back then. Maja appears again with Ulfhejm and emphasizes to Rubek that she is happy about her newfound freedom. Then Rubek and Irene are alone again and decide the next morning to climb a summit and see the glories of the world at sunrise to catch up on the past. The deaconess appears and Irene has to go. In the mountains you can hear Maja's song of joy.

Third act

Maja and Ulfhejm are in the high mountains. Ulfhejm invites her to spend the night in his mountain hut, but Maja is fed up with hunting and climbing and prefers to go down to the hotel. Ulfhejm reveals in conversation with Maja that he was once disappointed by a girl. Maja indirectly shows her regret about the life with Rubek, whereupon Ulfhejm Maja advances, but Maja does not accept it and wants to descend further. You see Rubek and Irene coming up, but you cannot avoid them because the path is too narrow. Ulfhejm warns the two of them not to climb to the summit because of the rising fog. While Maja and Ulfhejm continue to descend to get help for Irene and Rubek, they continue up regardless of the warning through the snowfield towards the summit until an avalanche is triggered and the two are buried under themselves. The deaconess appears and blesses the two. The third act also ends with Maya's song of joy, which can still be heard in the distance.

Structural analysis

When we dead awaken is one of Ibsen's shortest pieces, apart from early works. It consists of two medium-length and one short last act. As in all of Ibsen's dramas and characteristic of the naturalistic drama, the stage directions, consisting of detailed descriptions of the scenery at the beginning of each act, are very detailed. The time span is slightly longer, but does not exceed two days. “When we dead awaken” differs in that it radically frees itself from the unity of the place. Each act has its own scenery. The plot moves from bottom to top, from the fjord in the lowlands of the first act to the mountain plateau in the second to the mountains in the third. The actions of the people within the given time span are small, significant for the course of the drama are events from the past, which are mentioned in the dialogues of the people and thus gradually inform the audience about what happened between the people at that time. So "When We Dead Wake Up" is an analytical drama. The piece ends in the inevitable catastrophe , the deaths of Irene and Rubek. Rubek's decision to part with Maja and find perfect happiness with Irene can be seen as a turning point in the drama. On the linguistic level, alternating differences in the dialogues become clear: While the dialogues between Ulfhejm and Maja are simple, joking and rude, but have an undertone of heartfelt openness, Rubek and Irene talk in serious, moving and poetic language adorned with metaphors . The conversations between Maja and Rubek, on the other hand, are characterized by prosaic boredom, indifference and bitter irony. A striking feature of the interpersonal relationships between people is that Maja names her husband by his family name, while Irene uses his first name, Arnold.

interpretation

The antithetical structure and symbolic content of the scenery and dialogues is characteristic of the drama . Together they underline the main ideas and themes of the piece. According to Edvard Beyer, it is the antitheses of love and art, appearance and reality, expectation and disappointment, hope and despair and life and death. These in turn are connected to the central real as well as symbolic motif, the day of the resurrection. While Maja embodies the simple and rough life, Irene symbolizes the art for Rubek. The summit that Rubek wants to climb with Irene is symbolic of the synthesis of these two antithetical elements, which he tries to reconcile in order to achieve his ideal life goal. The sunrise, which they want to see from there, marks the beginning of a new life and thus the resurrection from the dead-like life of Irene and Rubek, which they had led up to then.

literature