One of the most important playwrights of the whole nineteenth century was the Norway Henrik Ibsen. He was born at Skien in 1828 and he dead at Cristiania (the present Oslo) in 1906. Son of a welfare family of the Norway austere and religious bourgeoisie, for a sudden financial difficult he, few older than fifty, must work as a boy at a pharmacy, going on the studies in medicine, but leaving them definitively to devote himself to literature and theatre writing. The first drama of Ibsen, just twenty, was “Catilina” (1848), where it is possible to find some elements of Schiller imprint. In 1851 he became officially an dramatic author and assistant at the National Theatre of Bergen and of this period are some national history featured works, belonging to the Norway heritage: “Lady Ingrid of Ostraat” (1854) and “Warriors at Helgeland” (1857). In the period between 1857 and 1862 Ibsen was engaged assiduously as director of the Theatre of Cristiania, where also he represented a satiric work of his, “The comedy of love“ (1862). When he won a scholarship, Ibsen left Norway in 1863; since then he lived permanently abroad, in Denmark, Austria, Italy and at Dresda, getting home only for brief periods. “Brand” and “Peer Gynt” are the works surely most relevant in the first producing phase of the Norway author. Both works were written during the stage in Italy. “Brand” is a five acts dramatic text narrating about a shepherd of souls, who intended to reform humanity by the means of global religious rigour and an inflexible will. He is a man of utmost faith, of an own religiosity, where pity and forgiveness let pass or even are not taken into account to get to a fixed purpose that is to redeem world on the Manichaean, to say it his way, slogan “or nothing or all“. Coherently with his charge, Brand will not leave his place of shepherd of souls, even if he lives in a deserted barren land and in spite the fact its climate does not suit his unique son, a very frail child, who must live elsewhere. Brand knows what he's going to meet, he's aware: irremovable, with his decision of remaining all costs, he brings to death his son. Equally he forbids his wife to remind the child, to cry for his death, ordering her to give all the child's few things to poorer people, ignoring, showing a big lack of sensibility, the awful sufferance of his wife, a pain that following will break her life prematurely. Little by little Brand believes his decisions are at the rate of divine will. At the end, unloved, he is caught by the will to reach the mystic ascesis, he thinks to put it in act climbing a mountain, where inexorably a avalanche will sweep him away. Brand embodies the man researching perfection without compromises, sacrificing everything to this purpose, his affections, his family and also himself. The protagonist of “Peer Gynt” instead is a farmer. The author draws his inspiration from the Norway tradition and particularly from a popular fairy tale. Peer Gynt has a thoughtless character, always searching love adventures, he does not take any responsibility, and he nurses himself in a sort of golden immaturity. This way he spends an existence where reality and imaginations intersect and confuse. Only Aase, his mother, succeeds in sharing this world. We watch at the symbolic description of the several phases of the life of Peer Gynt. The most important moments are three: Peer as adult, playing with his mother like a child; Peer abducts Ingrid, a young girl on the eve of wedding, abandoning her later; Peer gets away of the village and meets the daughter of the king of the trolls, the spirits of the forests. She wants to marry him and she brings him in his world where Peer, tempted by honours and riches, is almost to accept to become a troll and his husband too. But he thinks it again and gets away. His way is an endless runaway from daily live reality. After having looking after her mother Aase, who dies among his arms, and after having refused the lovely help of Solvejg, fallen madly in love with him, Peer leaves the village, taking to begging. He meets mysterious and symbolic beings and entities, but finally he gets back tired and deceived to his native land, where by a chance he sees again the loyal and already old Solvejg, who still loves him. Peer Gynt finds in the love of this old woman the image of whom he must have been and maybe he must want to be. In her arms he discovers the solace and the peace of life, he had instead always dealt with without reference points. The protagonist, following the theme of the human calling for researching the ego and the meaning of life, has chosen to go through all the several experiences in the attempt of fulfilling himself, since he does not succeed in well identifying the authenticity of his life, he does not succeed in knowing himself. (to be continued)

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