WORLD'S BEST CLASSICS The Wild Duck

كتاب WORLD'S BEST CLASSICS The Wild Duck
المؤلف: HENRIK IBSEN
ترجمة: Gamal El Touny
THE WILD DUCK
People had got used to the idea that Ibsen's dramas should engage in controversial issues, and hen The Wild Duck came out, 11 November 1884, the public was utterly bewildered. ALEXANDER KIELLAND found the book odd and was annoyed by "these everlasting symbols and hints and crude emphases." BJØRNSON called the whole play "disgusting," and thought its psychological foundation false: "The plot is based on the assumption that the fourteen-year-old martyr believes her father, who can hardly say one true word. Now, we know that nobody is quicker than children to observe if the promise of the personthey depend on is to be trusted. She was wise [to him) from the time she was four years old." In Denmark the majority of the press and of the Copenhagen theatergoing public was unable to grasp what Ibsen had intended by making such a "humoristic genre painting where, just in one corner of the floor, there lies a meaningless and uninteresting little pat of blood." But AUGUST STRINDBERG was most displeased of all; he imagined that hjalmar Ekdal was intended as a caricature of himself, in revenge for the satire which, in "Married," he had recently directed against the viewpoints in "A Doll's House." A few years later, Strindberg gathered up his antipathy to Bjørnson and Ibsen, and especially to the line of reasoning in "Ghosts" and "The Wild Duck," in a pregnant dramatic speech: "Give back joy to us, you preachers of the joy of living! Give us the cheerful little spirit of compromise and send the Old Men of the Mountains back where they belong! They came from their misty heights and made life dark and frightful. Give back the sun to us, just a little bit of sunshine, so one can see that the old celestial body still sits there in its old heaven."