by Henrik Ibsen
23. Mølledalen: The name literally means ‘Mill Valley’.
24. the devil take me: The original has ‘fan”, a coarse form of the more acceptable ‘fanden’ (the devil). Norwegian swear words are on the whole of a religious kind. It is hard to find English equivalents that are strong enough without being sexual or appearing anachronistic
25. Hounded me: Kiil is playing on words; ‘hundsvoterte mig’ literally means ‘hound-voted me out’, i.e. that he was voted out like a dog. The noun ‘hundsvott’ is a rare and strongly pejorative term, literally the genitalia of a female dog.
26. council: A certain local autonomy had been established in 1837, in the form of an executive committee, ‘formandskabet’. The representatives were elected by those who had the right to vote in parliamentary elections; men without property and women were excluded.
27. fifty kroner: The monthly salary for a labourer was around fifty kroner at this time.
28. damn well: See note 24.
29. bureaucrats: The members of the civil service (‘embedsmænd’) dominated local government. The local pastor would typically often also hold the position of mayor, particularly in rural districts.
30. solid majority: The expression ‘kompakt majoritet’ is here used for the first time in Dano-Norwegian, indicating a large and unchanging majority.
31. citizen: The term used here is ‘statsborger’ (literally ‘citizen of the state’).
32. Homeowners’ Association: Home ownership was the minimal requirement for the right to vote.
33. Temperance Society: The first Norwegian temperance society had been founded in 1845, and was followed by a number of societies for teetotallers, the first of which was established in 1859, after which the temperance movement lost support.
34. But no man can be denied his prudent and frank expression of opinion as a citizen: An allusion to the Norwegian Constitution’s section 100, securing the freedom of expression (‘frimodige ytringer’).
35. regional engineer: With the growth in communal responsibilities from the middle of the nineteenth century, a town engineer (‘stadsingeniør’) would often be part of a professionalized local administration.
36. boardroom secret: In a couple of instances there seems to be this confusion of the responsibilities of the management and the board.
37. war to the knife: Originally a rallying cry (‘War to the knife and knife to the hilt’) related to the issue of slavery. It first seems to have appeared in the Kansas Atchison Squatter Sovereign (c. 1854).
38. human rights: The idea of the individual’s inalienable rights had been formulated in the American Declaration of Independence in 1776 and in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789. The term ‘menneskerettigheder’, literally ‘human rights’, appears anachronistic in English.
39. dynamite: Dynamite had been invented by the Swede Alfred Nobel in 1863.
40. education of the people: Probably a reference to the function of local government as a kind of education into citizenship (‘borgeropdragelse’).
41. magistrate: The state representative in the towns. This could be an individual or made up of a small board.
42. supernatural power: ‘Styrelse’ more specifically refers to a belief in Divine Providence.
43. your honour: The use of title ‘byfogden’ (‘the mayor’) in the original here indicates a polite address in the third person, in the place of the formal pronoun ‘de’ (you).
44. municipal loan: The rural communes were on the whole cautious about taking up mortgages in this period.
45. subscription list: A promise of money. The signatories committed themselves to giving a loan or providing some other form of economic transaction.
46. swagger stick: A short stick traditionally used by the commanding officer as a sign of status. Here used in jest to refer to the mayor’s walking stick.
47. lion: Norway’s official heraldic emblem, a lion with a crown and a battle-axe. Here a symbolic reference to the people rising up (‘vågnende folkeløve’ literally means ‘awakening lion of the people’).
48. middle class: The original is ‘borgerskapet’, meaning the ‘bourgeoisie’ but also ‘the citizens’, and a series of connected words.
49. every status: The original has the words ‘alle stænder’, cf. ‘stand’ versus ‘klasse’, note 9.
50. the Club: A number of exclusive societies (‘borgerklubben’, literally ‘the club of the bourgeoisie’ or ‘of the citizens’) with similar names had been founded in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These had been losing influence from the 1840s onwards, however.
51. Silence: The original has ‘Silentium’, a Latin expression used conventionally in meetings to command silence.
52. I am a taxpayer: Tax liability was based on land ownership in the rural districts and on income and wealth in the towns.
53. common folk: ‘Almue’ referred both to a large crowd and, more generally, to the great masses of the people, often used in a pejorative way of speaking about the uncultivated and uneducated.
54. eider: A large duck found all along the Norwegian coast, but especially in the north.
55. timberman: ‘Lasthandler’ more specifically refers to a timber trader.
56. Methuselahs: According to Genesis 5:21–7, Methuselah is said to have died at the age of 969.
57. freethinker: Originally a seventeenth-century concept referring to someone whose thinking ran counter to religious orthodoxy.
58. the poodle’s cranium has developed quite differently from that of the mongrel: Ibsen was familiar with Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. On the Origin of Species had first appeared in Danish translation in 1872.
59. inherited lie: A ‘folkeløgn’ (literally ‘people’s lie’) is a lie which has been taken up by the people at large.
60. an enemy of the people: In Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, which Ibsen may have drawn on here, the protagonist is sentenced ‘as enemy to the people and his country’ (III.iii).
61. Mr Vik: Ibsen’s stage direction first only calls him ‘a fat man’.
62. shakes the dust from his feet: An allusion to Christ’s admonition to his disciples in Matthew 10:14: ‘And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.’
63. ‘I forgive you, for you know not what you do’: An allusion to Christ’s words during the Crucifixion. See Luke 23:34: ‘Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.’
64. free-minded: In this instance the Norwegian ‘frisindede’ is translated literally, as ‘free-minded’, in order to retain the more general sense of the term. The usual translation, ‘freethinking’, is problematic because of its political connotations. The political party ‘Det frisindede Venstre’ (‘The free-minded Left’) was liberal. In the rest of the translation ‘frisindet’ has generally been translated as ‘liberal’ and ‘liberal-minded’.
65. house owner: The original uses ‘husfader’, literally ‘father of the house’.
66. Father-in-law: The polite address was commonly used towards the elderly, even within the family. Dr Stockmann here uses the formal ‘De’ (you).
67. if only I understood the local conditions: Aslasken also appears in an earlier play by Ibsen, The League of Youth (1869), as a comic drunkard, where he has a catchphrase, ‘de lokale forhold’ (‘the local conditions’), with the last line of that play being ‘it depends on the local conditions’. The reprise of the catchphrase here is clearly intended as a comic touch for contemporary theatre-goers.
68. I shall hurl my inkwell straight at their skulls: An allusion to the story of Luther throwing his inkpot at the devil.
Acknowledgements
‘The strongest man in the world,’ Dr Stockmann famously pronounces in An Enemy of the People, ‘is he who stands most alone.’ Those involved in this
new Penguin Classics edition of Henrik Ibsen’s modern prose plays have, with all due modesty, begged to disagree. This project is very much the result of a collective effort.
Many therefore deserve thanks. The project was initiated by Alexis Kirschbaum, then editor of Penguin Classics. As we moved into first draft stage it was taken over by a new Penguin editor, Jessica Harrison, who has shown patience, flexibility and good cheer all along, as well as being an admirably alert reader.
On behalf of all involved, I would like to extend a special thanks to the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Without their generous support it would have been impossible to stick to our original ambitions. Along the way workshops have twice been hosted by the Norwegian Embassy in London, where I would like to thank Eva Moksnes Vincent and Anne Ulset in particular, and once by the Centre for Ibsen Studies at the University of Oslo, where Frode Helland and Laila Yvonne Henriksen deserve thanks. We are also very grateful to the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Oslo for letting us base this edition on Henrik Ibsens Skrifter (HIS). It makes this the first English-language edition based on the most comprehensive critical edition of Ibsen available. The extensive critical apparatus which only became available with HIS has also been a most valuable resource in our work and in composing our own endnotes.
A special group of expert readers have been invaluable during the many rounds of feedback and revisions: Paul Binding, Colin Burrow, Terence Cave, Janet Garton and Toril Moi. A number of other people have participated in seminars and discussions or offered their help or advice on various points, and I would like to mention Carsten Carlsen, Bart van Es, Frode Helland, Stein Iversen, Christian Janss, Peter D. McDonald, Randi Meyer, Martin Puchner, Anne Rikter-Svendsen, Bjørn Tysdahl, Marie Wells, Gina Winje and Marianne Wimmer, in addition, of course, to the four translators involved in the project, Deborah Dawkin, Barbara Haveland, Erik Skuggevik and Anne-Marie Stanton-Ife. Many thanks also go to my employer, The Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages, University of Oslo, and to the governing body of St Catherine’s College, Oxford, and its master, Roger Ainsworth, for hosting me so generously as Christensen Visiting Fellow during the spring of 2013.
A particular debt of gratitude is owed to Professor Terence Cave, who has ended up acting as the main reader and my main support throughout the project. It is difficult to conceive where we would have been without his sensitive readings and stubborn commitment to the cause, the re-creation of Ibsen’s storyworld. I would also like to thank Janet Garton for her special investment in this volume, and to extend my warmest thanks to my family, Norunn, Anne Magdalene and Johannes Sakarias Bru Rem, for their patience.
Transferring Ibsen into English has been an exceptionally challenging task, a work that has inspired in us all an even greater respect for this towering artist. For those of us who have acted as readers and re-readers of various versions of these translations, it has also demonstrated how exceptionally difficult the art of translation can be. Finally, I would therefore like to thank the translators, without whom these new texts would not exist, for their stubbornness, persistence and commitment, and, not least, for their competence and gift for mediation.
Tore Rem
Oslo, August 2015
THE BEGINNING
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First published in Penguin Classics 2016
Translations copyright © Deborah Dawkin and Erik Skuggevik, 2016
Introduction and editorial material © Tore Rem, 2016
Cover: Inger in black and Violet by Edvard Munch, 1892 © The Munch-Ellingsen Group / The Munch Museum / BONO
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Published with the support of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
ISBN: 978-0-141-96415-7
