Title:  When We Dead Awaken

Author:  Henrik Ibsen

Release Date:  December, 2003 [EBook #4782] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on March 24, 2002]

Edition:  10

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

*** Start of the project gutenberg EBOOK when we dead awaken ***

Produced by Sonia K.

WHEN WE DEAD AWAKEN

By Henrik Ibsen.

Introduction and translation by William Archer.

INTRODUCTION.

From Pillars of Society to John Gabriel Borkman, Ibsen’s plays had followed each other at regular intervals of two years, save when his indignation over the abuse heaped upon Ghosts reduced to a single year the interval between that play and An Enemy of the People. John Gabriel Borkman having appeared in 1896, its successor was expected in 1898; but Christmas came and brought no rumour of a new play.  In a man now over seventy, this breach of a long-established habit seemed ominous.  The new National Theatre in Christiania was opened in September of the following year; and when I then met Ibsen (for the last time) he told me that he was actually at work on a new play, which he thought of calling a “Dramatic Epilogue.”  “He wrote When We Dead Awaken,” says Dr. Elias, “with such labour and such passionate agitation, so spasmodically and so feverishly, that those around him were almost alarmed.  He must get on with it, he must get on!  He seemed to hear the beating of dark pinions over his head.  He seemed to feel the grim Visitant, who had accompanied Alfred Allmers on the mountain paths, already standing behind him with uplifted hand.  His relatives are firmly convinced that he knew quite clearly that this would be his last play, that he was to write no more.  And soon the blow fell.”

When We Dead Awaken was published very shortly before Christmas 1899.  He had still a year of comparative health before him.  We find him in March 1900, writing to Count Prozor:  “I cannot say yet whether or not I shall write another drama; but if I continue to retain the vigour of body and mind which I at present enjoy, I do not imagine that I shall be able to keep permanently away from the old battlefields.  However, if I were to make my appearance again, it would be with new weapons and in new armour.”  Was he hinting at the desire, which he had long ago confessed to Professor Herford, that his last work should be a drama in verse?  Whatever his dream, it was not to be realised.  His last letter (defending his attitude of philosophic impartiality with regard to the South African war) is dated December 9, 1900.  With the dawn of the new century, the curtain descended upon the mind of the great dramatic poet of the age which had passed away.