Literary Journey
In Ibsen land. . . some stories
Henrik Ibsen
In Oslo in August 2006, a group of individuals that included me was shown around the Ibsen Museum which was at one time Henrik Ibsen's home. The Bangladesh delegation to the grand closing of the year-long Ibsen centenary program in Oslo included Md. Quazi Manzur-i-Mowla, Kamaluddin Nilu, Professor Sonia Nishat Amin, Professor Ahsanuzzaman, Ashish Khondakar and the writer. Foreign participants' visit to the museum was an important part of the closing of the programme. On 23 May 2006, the Norwegian Queen opened the new Ibsen Museum and a comprehensive exhibit featuring Ibsen´s life and work. On that date exactly 100 years ago, Ibsen passed away at his home in Arbins Gate 1. For the last 11 years of his life he lived in an apartment at Arbins Gate 1, Oslo. We were told that the apartment-turned-museum has the playwright's own furniture as well as the original fixtures, décor and colors. The visit thus took us backstage and introduced us to his private life, private belongings. The museum tells a personal story about the private life of an aging Ibsen. One gets an authentic impression of the playwright's home. The restoration of floors, walls, ceilings and surfaces was done according to on-site archeological findings supplemented by historic research. We found the museum quite centrally located in on Henrik Ibsen Street, right across the royal palace. It's within walking distance of the National Theater also. The exhibits there depict the great playwright in some personal perspectives, with many personal belongings shedding light on his political and aesthetic views. The guide, with whom we could hardly keep up, as she rather raced and fluttered around its rooms, told us at one stage that the particular ending of A Doll's House is one that Ibsen gave to the play under his wife's influence. One from our delegation then dropped the sound, "Ha-a-a!" Others exchanged looks. But, as we know, there's no end to the uproar over the supposedly feministic message of this play that rises mostly from its closing scene. This then reminded me of the particular speech that Ibsen delivered in Oslo on 26 May 1888 before the Norwegian Women's Rights League: "I thank you for the toast, but must disclaim the honor of having worked for the women's rights movement. I am not even quite clear as to just what this women's rights movement really is. To me it has seemed a problem of mankind in general. And if you read my books carefully you will understand this." We had on our team a number of strong feminists; and in both our adda and serious activities like paper-presentation we differed a lot on related issues. One day, after a seminar-session at Oslo University, I found Prof. Sonia Amin in a debate with a Norwegian participant over Nora's role in A Doll's House. Later I came to know that the gentleman was none else than Trond Woxen, an Ibsen scholar whose essay I had read and quoted from. I had felt at one with some of Woxen's views about Nora. In the glass-covered showcase at the entrance to the museum, I spotted a book published by Routledge that had been declared unreliable by one Ibsen scholar at an international Ibsen conference held in Dhaka. So that was both very thrilling and vindicating for me personally for, taking the cue from that book, I had placed one piece of information at the conference about Ibsen's involvement in radical politics in his early life. At Ibsen museum, all of us had the other gratifying scope of getting photographed with Nora Ibsen, Ibsen's great grand daughter. In 1994, Oslo had opened the Ibsen Museum to honor its most famous writer. The curators had tried to re-create the apartment (a longtime exhibit at the Norwegian Folk Museum) as authentically as possible. The study, for example, had Ibsen's original furniture, and the entire apartment was decorated as though Ibsen still lived in it. So, it was duly called "a living museum" and regularly scheduled talks on playwriting and the theater, recitations and theatrical performances. The library, dining room and parlours were open to the public. The study, where Ibsen wrote his last two plays, John Gabriel Borkman and When We dead Awaken, is still the "crown jewel" of the museum, but after the restoration of the floors, walls, ceilings and surfaces in the 320m2 grand apartment and deposition of the original furniture from the two other Ibsen Museums in Norway, the authenticity in the other rooms is now close to impeccable. Some other information I could gather about this renovation or recreation of the Museum go as follows: When Suzannah Ibsen died in 1914 the home was dismantled and the furniture scattered. The municipality of Kristiania assumed possession of Henrik Ibsen's study and bedroom and deposited all of it at the Norwegian Folk Museum. The library went to the county museum in Skien (now Telemark museum) and the dining room to the Ibsen House Museum (now the City of Grimstad´s museums). The family retained possession of the remaining furniture. In 1990 actor Knut Wigert took the initiative of renting the apartment, based on a wish to make it available to the public. As a point of departure for further restorations, studies were done documenting the most important rooms in the apartment. The Norwegian Folk Museum took over responsibility for operations in 1993, and Ibsen's study was restored but limited resources and a lack of original artifacts resulted in only this particular room being given an adequate presentation. The Ibsen family has made an important contribution to the opportune results. Ambassador Tancred Ibsen has lent out and donated a large amount of personal property inherited from his great-grandfather; and his cousin, the actor Joen Bille, has for many years helped us with the task of locating and reacquiring original furnishings. At this house in later years, Ibsen would often stand by the window, and discovering him there was a regular and popular attraction for all sections of people in Oslo. On coming back to Bangladesh, I was looking for more information about the Ibsen Museum, and could collect some of them. Sigurd Ibsen (Ibsen's son), as expected, had taken some significant decisions after his mother's death in 1914. He gave his father's study and bedroom to the city of Kristiania, the reading room to the county museum in Skien and the dining room to Grimstad, where the chemist´s shop in which Ibsen had worked had been made into a museum as early as in 1909. Since Henrik and Suzannah Ibsen had leased the apartment at Arbins gate 1, Sigurd did not wish to continue to pay rent on his parents´ home any longer than was necessary. Sigurd is said to have promised his parents to keep the furnishings from "the red drawing room". So, he took the furniture from that room and most of the paintings to Villa Ibsen in Suisi near Bolzano in Italy, where he lived until his death in 1930. All these went out of the family's possession in 1968 when the place was sold to some Italians. To one's relief, and thanks to the Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs of Norway, the furniture could be bought back in 2002. The paintings are still to be found in Villa Ibsen, but the Ibsen Museum has with the assistance of Ibsen´s great grandchild, the actor Joen Bille, been granted the right of pre-emption. In Ibsen's study, our attention was particularly drawn to a portrait of Strindberg. As some of us may very much know, the Swedish playwright hated Ibsen. And Ibsen was aware of Strindberg's antagonism towards him; yet he kept a portrait of Strindberg on his wall: "I cannot write a line," he remarked, "without that madman standing and staring down at me with his mad eyes." I tried to recollect how Strindberg adored Nietzsche, and had made that clear with an extreme metaphor: "My spirit has received in its uterus a tremendous outpouring of seed from Friedrich Nietzsche, so that I feel as full as a pregnant bitch." Maybe Strindberg shared his master's view of life as a perpetual struggle between the strong and the weak. One may remember also how Strindberg placed some Ibsen plays in his so-called misogynistic statements: "You'll see there's a good market for 'Woman Hate' now," he wrote to his publisher in 1888. "The Doll's House period is over." Again: "What would have happened to A Doll's House if Helmer had received a little justice? Or to Ghosts if Mr. Alving had been allowed to live and tell the audience that his wife was lying about him? Nojust blame everything on them, blacken their names, tread them in the mud so that they haven't a square inch left cleanthat makes for good theater!" Ibsen was closely connected with a number of other greats of his time and world. As for painting, Edvard Munch (18631944) comes first, and the guide at Ibsen Museum mentioned him a number of times. It could not be otherwise, particularly because Munch's iconic image, The Scream (1893), is in many ways a response to the restrictive and hypocritical society Ibsen so thoroughly disapproves of. However, Munch's connection to Ibsen runs much deeper: the painter created more than 400 illustrations of Ibsen's plays. At fourteen, Edvard Munch made his first illustration for Ibsen's The Pretenders--the drawing Skule Baardsøn and Bishop Nicholas. There are stage drafts, illustrations, portrayals of characters, and variations on Ibsen's themes throughout his work. Munch inserted his own portrait and sometimes those of other prominent persons into Ibsen's plays, and even if Ibsen never sat for Munch, he made portraits of Ibsen himself. On the other hand, Ibsen had taken big interest in Munch's work titled Woman in Three Stages. And the latter was sure that this work had inspired him when he created the three main female characters in When We Dead Awaken --- Irene, Maja and the deaconess. Moments before his death, Henrik Ibsen sat up in bed and said in a loud, clear voice: "On the contrary" ("Tvert imod"). We are told also that this parting phrase or message can serve as a summary of Ibsen´s personality. In his writing also, he demonstrated scepticism towards established truths, raised doubts, objected and asked both compromising and uncompromising questions.
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