franco manzoni

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(terza parte)

Franco Manzoni

The dramas of the elder age of Henrik Ibsen focalize particularly the individuality of human beings in comparison with and in contrast against conventions still far rooted in the society at end of the century: they are “The wild duck “ (1884), “ The House of Rosmer “ (1886), “The woman of the sea “ (1889), “Hedda Gabler” (1890), “The Builder Solness” (1892), “The little Eyolf” (1894) and the last two works “John Gabriel Borkmann” (1896) and “When we, the dead, wake up “ (1899).
The wild duck, in five acts, stages a poor family composed by Hjalmar, his wife Gina and the daughter Edvige. Ibsen describes rather skilfully the character of a loser hero. Indeed Hjalmar, even if aware that his wife Gina, some years before has been the lover of a certain Werle, does not have the courage to oppose against this situation keeping silent. The drama's title comes from the animal the daughter tries to capture on the roof.
“The woman of the sea “, instead, outlines in three acts the very complex personage of Ellida, the second wife of doctor Wangel.
The woman lives with her husband and the daughters her husband had from his first marriage, in a house next to the sea, the vastness ever in move and never tamed, that mysteriously fascinates and attracts Ellida.
For the woman the sea exerts inevitably an attraction, it is the Place where she must go to daily, where space and limit turn into infinitive.
And here it inserts a previous psychological drama: some years before Ellida, aver a liaison with a Foreigner, is traumatized by his disappearing, bringing to her a deep feel of anxiety and uneasiness.
When suddenly the Foreigner gets back and intends to resume the liaison with her, doctor Wangel opposes inflexibly at the beginning.
Following he prefers that his wife personally puts in act personally and responsibly her own choice. Ellida, upsetting all previsions, decides not to follow the mysterious foreigner, who disappears as he appeared again alike a sudden and impetuous wind, getting away with all the easiness having upset the woman by the time.
Another drama about marriage is “Hedda Gabler”, in three acts, showing a frail and wicked woman, married to a flat middle-class guy, Jorgen Tesman, of whom Hedda gets tired in brief, she's taken even by a deadly boredom for such married life. The return of a writer, previously her great love, increases furthermore the condition of prostration, dissatisfaction and failure of this woman, quite oppressed by a dying marriage.
In addition the writer is now with a new lover, Thea, he seems a different man, stronger and decided as ever.
Then Lovborg after getting drunk loses a manuscript, Thea cared a lot. The wicked and jealous Hedda finds it but consumed with jealousy decides to destroy it and so she burns it.
Then she suggests Lovborg “the opportuneness” to suicide, handing him a pistol, so to redress a wrong toward “ the so loved Thea”.
So the writer commits suicide in a brothel, where Brack, Hedda's suitor, recognizes the pistol as hers and decides to blackmail the woman. The drama ends with Hedda committing suicide to prevent falling in the Brack's blackmail and to avoid a scandal, trying to pass it off as an accident simulating to have got wounded do dead while messing about with her father's pistols.
A work showing an inspiration of autobiographic imprint is “The Builder Solness: the protagonist feels the regret for his two sons' death occurred accidentally during the fire of the house, a tragic event but unconsciously wanted. Solness spends all his life having this regret for a hypothetical sin.
Then, after a whole life spent as a builder, remembering the promise he made to Hilde, by then a child - to turn her into his princess and to built her a reign - accepts this requirement, now he's old.
Hilde, already adult, wants a symbolic gesture: Solness must get on the tower of a castle-house, he has early built, to place the inaugural crown in honour of the woman.
The old man gets on the tower, but after having placed the crown suddenly is taken ill and falls.
This drama's protagonist is a metaphor representing the man who, to achieve his own art ideal, sacrifices everything, this case - even if unconsciously - his two sons suffering then for all his live.
Throughout these last works Ibsen opens to Symbolism keeping on investigating the problems concerning the interpersonal and love relationships: his personages, one way or another, are disappointed and frustrated heroes by human life, while mysterious forces modulate partly everyone destine, bending with the breeze.