Little Eyolf

Little Eyolf

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Title: Little Eyolf
Author: Henrik Ibsen
Release Date: April, 2005 [EBook #7942] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on June 3, 2003]

Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-Latin-1
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE
EYOLF ***

Produced by Nicole Apostola

LITTLE EYOLF. By Henrik Ibsen
Translated, With an Introduction, by William Archer
INTRODUCTION.
Little Eyolf was written in Christiania during 1894, and published in
Copenhagen on December 11 in that year. By this time Ibsen's
correspondence has become so scanty as to afford us no clue to what
may be called the biographical antecedents of the play. Even of
anecdotic history very little attaches to it. For only one of the characters
has a definite model been suggested. Ibsen himself told his French
translator, Count Prozor, that the original of the Rat-Wife was "a little
old woman who came to kill rats at the school where he was educated.
She carried a little dog in a bag, and it was said that children had been
drowned through following her." This means that Ibsen did not himself
adapt to his uses the legend so familiar to us in Browning's Pied Piper
of Hamelin, but found it ready adapted by the popular imagination of
his native place, Skien. "This idea," Ibsen continued to Count Prozor,
"was just what I wanted for bringing about the disappearance of Little
Eyolf, in whom the infatuation [Note: The French word used by Count
Prozor is "infatuation." I can think of no other rendering for it; but I do
not quite know what it means as applied to Allmers and Eyolf.] and the
feebleness of his father reproduced, but concentrated, exaggerated, as

one often sees them in the son of such a father." Dr. Elias tells us that a
well-known lady-artist, who in middle life suggested to him the figure
of Lona Hessel, was in later years the model for the Rat-Wife. There is
no inconsistency between these two accounts of the matter. The idea
was doubtless suggested by his recollection of the rat-catcher of Skien,
while traits of manner and physiognomy might be borrowed from the
lady in question.
The verse quoted on pp. 52 and 53 [Transcriber's Note: "There stood
the champagne," etc., in ACT I] is the last line of a very well-known
poem by Johan Sebastian Welhaven, entitled Republikanerne, written
in 1839. An unknown guest in a Paris restaurant has been challenged
by a noisy party of young Frenchmen to join them in drinking a health
to Poland. He refuses; they denounce him as a craven and a slave; he
bares his breast and shows the scars of wounds received in fighting for
the country whose lost cause has become a subject for conventional
enthusiasm and windy rhetoric.
"De saae pas hverandre. Han vandred sin vei. De havde champagne,
men rörte den ei."
"They looked at each other. He went on his way. There stood their
champagne, but they did not touch it." The champagne incident leads
me to wonder whether the relation between Rita and Allmers may not
have been partly suggested to Ibsen by the relation between Charlotte
Stieglitz and her weakling of a husband. Their story must have been
known to him through George Brandes's Young Germany, if not more
directly. "From time to time," says Dr. Brandes, "there came over her
what she calls her champagne-mood; she grieves that this is no longer
the case with him." [Note: Main Currents of Nineteenth Century
Literature, vol. vi. p. 299] Did the germ of the incident lie in these
words?
The first performance of the play in Norway took place at the
Christiania Theatre on January 15, 1895, Fru Wettergren playing Rita
And Fru Dybwad, Asta. In Copenhagen (March 13, 1895) Fru Oda
Nielsen and