From the Bookshelf of The Athena Project…

Four Great Plays: Ghosts / The Wild Duck / An Enemy of the People / A Doll's House

Henrik Ibsen,

R. Farquharson Sharp (Translator)

Discussion: Complexity of reality

Why we're reading this: Before reading this book, I thought that the truth is nearly the absolute “good”, while illusions the abs…more
[close] Before reading this book, I thought that the truth is nearly the absolute “good”, while illusions the absolute “bad”. The romantics talk about “truth” and “beauty”, yet this is that “truth” in the realm of subjective experience, largely in the aesthetic and philosophic realm. Here in Ibsen’s plays, the “truth” is bone-dry factual data points, which makes these plays surprisingly poignant. How can one dispute the value of “factual truth”? Shouldn’t human lives being better off living in the world of such “factual truth”?

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Complexity of reality

The complexity of reality
By Ci · 1 post · 1 views

last updated Dec 31, 2013 12:12PM

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Nov 27, 2013 Ci rated it it was amazing

I roughly summarize these four plays as “be wary of truth: the discovery, the revealing, and the handling of it may make or break lives and spirits”. Before reading this book, I thought that the truth is nearly the absolute “good”, while illusions the absolute “bad”. The romantics talk about “truth” and “beauty”, yet this is that “truth” in the realm of subjective experience, largely in the aesthetic and philosophic realm. Here in Ibsen’s plays, the “truth” is bone-dry factual data points, which I roughly summarize these four plays as “be wary of truth: the discovery, the revealing, and the handling of it may make or break lives and spirits”. Before reading this book, I thought that the truth is nearly the absolute “good”, while illusions the absolute “bad”. The romantics talk about “truth” and “beauty”, yet this is that “truth” in the realm of subjective experience, largely in the aesthetic and philosophic realm. Here in Ibsen’s plays, the “truth” is bone-dry factual data points, which makes these plays surprisingly poignant. How can one dispute the value of “factual truth”? Shouldn’t human lives being better off living in the world of such “factual truth”?

Factual truth can be harmful and ruinous, particularly in the hands of the egotistical and the vainglorious. Only the strong in self-command can survive and thrive in truth.

The first one is Nora in “A Doll’s House”. Much is written about this play in the theme of gender equality in marriage, but I am struck by the un-generalized epiphanic moment — the sheer terror of a day and half remade Nora from an ostensibly coquettish and fluttery woman into someone who was suddenly in possession of her selfhood. The playwright provided a couple of convenient false exits that would have returned her to her old world, but she walked into the cold, shorn of all the protection of a bourgeoisie wifehood. Can she survive and thrive afterwards? She will have her test yet; Doll’s House is just Act I.

In Ghost, Mrs Alving made a different margin with her marriage. She took in the conventional approach, born the burden and shame, kept the appearances, in hope such duty-bounded sternness is the higher ground. Here, middle-brow religiosity is in full play, with a good dollop of naive sentiments. Even though Mrs. Alving laughing at Pastor Mander’s gullibility, she herself was perhaps persuaded both by Mander’s religious lecturing as well as her feeling toward him. Mrs. Alving did not run away from the “truth” of her marriage, she did her best to cope with both her husband and arranged the life of her son (and Regina, her maid and perhaps ward). But the truth runs its course and left ruins along the way.

The factual truth is perhaps best exhibited in the “An Enemy of the People”. I have met various reincarnations of Dr. Stockmann in my working experience — the particularly potent combination of analytical intelligence, moral righteousness, political naiveté and deficiency in empathy — which run amok in real life.

The last play is the touching and profound understanding of what one should do with factual truth. “Wild Duck” tells us a story about feelings — a fragile non-being, like the goodwill and affection between husband and wife, between a parent and a child. Of it is a broken and imperfect thing (the lame duck, the half-blind girl), piteous and sorrowful, but a source of warmth and life. Such feelings may be founded in non-factual truth, yet they are perhaps much more important for the sustainability of human lives that the dry factual truth. The fallacy of those who have a messianic intent on “demand of ideals” is the blindness to the fact that common human lives often can survive without the veil of delusion and half-truth. ...more

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