Henrik ibsen biography timeline project

May 20, Henrik Ibsen was born in May 23rd, in a small lumbering town of Southern Norway. When he was only 8 years old his father became a disgrace of a merchant after going bankrupt. Henrik Ibsen released his in titled Catilina it had been inspired by the Latin texts he had to study for university and while it wasn't a great play per say it did show that a natural bent for theatre.

And during this period he used and time he had off to write a play's.

Henrik ibsen biography timeline project

Oct 9, Inwhen Ibsen was 18, Else Jensdatter was a House servant produced an illegitimate child with ibsen, who was named Jacob Henrikson. Ibsen payed for the boy until he turned During this time ibsen never saw or wanted to interact with his son. Some few decades after though, "legends" has it that his son had visited him in Oslo then Christiania.

Ibsen went to Christiania intending to matriculate at the university, He soon rejected the idea, preferring to commit himself to writing. He was not accepted and gave up on his dream of being a doctor and started studying drama as a stage manager. This was a posotive micro conflict because it lead to his career as a playwrite and it was only him.

Henrik met Suzannah Thoresen. They married two years later and they had their only son, Sigurd, in He became an artistic manager at the Christiana Norwegian Theater until it went bankrupt. The years he was there were notable for his failures. This was a negative, macro conflict because lots of people were affected. When working on the play, Ibsen received his only visit from a relative during his decades in exile, when year old Count Christopher Paus paid an extended visit to him in Rome.

Shortly after the visit Ibsen declared that he had overcome a writer's block. Over the course of the play, the many secrets that lie henrik ibsen biography timeline project the Ekdals' apparently happy home are revealed to Gregers, who insists on pursuing the absolute truth, or the "Summons of the Ideal". Among these truths: Gregers' father impregnated his servant Gina, then married her off to Hjalmar to legitimize the child.

Another man has been disgraced and imprisoned for a crime the elder Werle committed. Furthermore, while Hjalmar spends his days working on a wholly imaginary "invention", his wife is earning the household income. Ibsen displays masterly use of irony: despite his dogmatic insistence on truth, Gregers never says what he thinks but only insinuates, and is never understood until the play reaches its climax.

Gregers hammers away at Hjalmar through innuendo and coded phrases until he realizes the truth: that Gina's daughter, Hedvig, is not his child. Blinded by Gregers' insistence on absolute truth, Hjalmar disavows the child. Seeing the damage he has wrought, Gregers determines to repair things, and suggests to Hedvig that she sacrifice the wild duck, her wounded pet, to prove her love for Hjalmar.

Hedvig, alone among the characters, recognizes that Gregers always speaks in code, and looking for the deeper meaning in the first important statement Gregers makes which does not contain one, kills herself rather than the duck in order to prove her love for him in the ultimate act of self-sacrifice. Only too late do Hjalmar and Gregers realize that the absolute truth of the "ideal" is sometimes too much for the human heart to bear.

Late in his career, Ibsen turned to a more introspective drama that had much less to do with denunciations of society's moral values and more to do with the problems of individuals. In such later plays as Hedda Gabler and The Master BuilderIbsen explored psychological conflicts that transcended a simple rejection of current conventions. Many modern readers, who might regard anti-Victorian didacticism as dated, simplistic or hackneyed, have found these later works to be of absorbing interest for their hard-edged, objective consideration of interpersonal confrontation.

Hedda Gabler and A Doll's House are regularly cited as Ibsen's most popular and influential plays, [ 41 ] with the title role of Hedda regarded as one of the most challenging and rewarding for an actress even in the present day. Ibsen had completely rewritten the rules of drama with a realism which was to be adopted by Chekhov and others, and which we see in the theatre to this day.

From Ibsen forward, challenging assumptions and directly speaking about issues has been considered one of the factors that makes a play art rather than entertainment [ citation needed ]. His works were brought to an English-speaking audience, largely thanks to the efforts of William Archer and Edmund Gosse. These in turn had a profound influence on the young James Joyce who venerates Ibsen in his early autobiographical novel Stephen Hero.

Ibsen returned to Norway inbut it was in many ways not the Norway he had left. Indeed, he had played a major role in the changes that had happened across society. Modernism was on the rise, not only in the theatre, but across public life. Ibsen intentionally obscured his influences. On 23 MayIbsen died in his home at Arbins gade 1 in Kristiania now Oslo [ 45 ] after a series of strokes in March When, on 22 May, his nurse assured a visitor that he was a little better, Ibsen spluttered his last words "On the contrary" "Tvertimod!

He died the following day at pm. The th anniversary of Ibsen's death in was commemorated with an "Ibsen year" in Norway and other countries. Ivo de Figueiredo argues that "today, Ibsen belongs to the world. But it is impossible to understand [Ibsen's] path out there without knowing the Danish cultural sphere from which he sprang, from which he liberated himself and which he ended up shaping.

Ibsen developed as a person and artist in a dialogue with Danish theater and literature that was anything but smooth. It features plays by Ibsen, performed by artists from various parts of the world in varied languages and styles. Its purpose is to foster through lectures, readings, performances, conferences, and publications an understanding of Ibsen's works as they are interpreted as texts and produced on stage and in film and other media.

An annual newsletter, Ibsen News and Comment, is distributed to all members. At the time when Ibsen was writing, literature was emerging as a formidable force in 19th century society. Ibsen's plays, from A Doll's House onwards, caused an uproar—not just in Norway, but throughout Europe, and even across the Atlantic in America. No other artist, apart from Richard Wagnerhad such an effect internationally, inspiring almost blasphemous adoration and hysterical abuse.

After the publication of Ghostshe wrote: "while the storm lasted, I have made many studies and observations and I shall not hesitate to exploit them in my future writings. Ibsen expected criticism; as he wrote to his publisher: " Ghosts will probably cause alarm in some circles, but it can't be helped. If it did not, there would have been no necessity for me to have written it.

Ibsen didn't just read the critical reaction to his plays, he actively corresponded henrik ibsen biography timeline project critics, publishers, theatre directors, and newspaper editors on the subject. The interpretation of his work, both by critics and directors, concerned him greatly. He often advised directors on which actor or actress would be suitable for a particular role.

An example of this is a letter he wrote to Hans Schroder in Novemberwith detailed instructions for the production of The Wild Duck. Ibsen's plays initially reached a far wider audience as read plays rather than in performance. It was 20 years, for instance, before the authorities would allow Ghosts to be performed in Norway. Each new play that Ibsen wrote, from onwards, had an explosive effect on intellectual circles.

This was greatest for A Doll's House and Ghostsand it did lessen with the later plays, but the translation of Ibsen's works into German, French, and English during the decade following the initial publication of each play—as well as frequent new productions as and when permission was granted—meant that Ibsen remained a topic of lively conversation throughout the latter decades of the 19th century.

When A Doll's House was published, it had an explosive effect: it was the centre of every conversation at every social gathering in Christiania. Ibsen was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in, and Ibsen was also a key figure in Japanese drama and greatly influenced the Shingeki movement; Kunio Yanagita established the Ipusen-kai, an Ibsen Society inand shortly before Ibsen's death, Hogetsu Shimamura declared an "Age of Ibsen" in Japan.

Ibsen's ancestry has been a much studied subject, due to both his perceived foreignness [ 21 ] and the influence of his biography and family on his plays. Ibsen often made references to his family in his plays, sometimes by name, or by modelling characters after them. The oldest documented member of the Ibsen family was ship's captain Rasmus Ibsen — from Stege, Denmark.

His son, ship's captain Peder Ibsen, became a burgher of Bergen in Norway in Most of his ancestors belonged to the merchant class of original Danish and German extraction, and many of his ancestors were ship's captains. This, however, is not completely accurate; notably through his grandmother Hedevig Paus, Ibsen was descended from the Paus familyoften considered one of the oldest families in Norway.

Ibsen's ancestors had mostly lived in Norway for several generations, even though many had foreign ancestry. The patronymic became "frozen", i. The phenomenon of patronymics becoming frozen started in the 17th century in bourgeois families in Denmark, and the practice was only widely adopted in Norway from around Their son was Tancred Ibsenwho became a film director and was married to Lillebil Ibsen ; their only child was diplomat Tancred Ibsen, Jr.

His male line together with the male-descended lines of the wider Ibsen family he belonged to will end with the deaths of Tancred Jr. Ibsen had an illegitimate child early in his life, not entitled to the family name or inheritance. This line ended with his biological grandchildren. In a letter to George Brandes shortly before the Paris CommuneIbsen expressed anarchist views that Brandes later positively related to the Paris Commune.

Ibsen wrote that the state "is the curse of the individual. Ibsen wrote, "Is it not impudent of the commune in Paris to go and destroy my admirable state theory, or rather no state theory? The idea is now ruined for a long time to come, and I cannot even set it forth in verse with any propriety. Major translation projects include: [ 76 ]. Olav in Contents move to sidebar hide.

Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikisource Wikidata item. Norwegian playwright and theatre director — For other people, see Ibsen name.