| "Damaged Goods,"

<11 October 1918> |

Sociological drama and novel are the fashion these | days - and a very good fashion too, but | like all other fashions inclined to become a mere | affectation, or perhaps even worse, a cloak for appeals | to baser taste.

However much either of the last-named charges may be | levelled against some recent efforts of the sort they | are not to be thought about in connection with the | great mind of Henrik Ibsen, the man who, without the | least doubt, deserves credit as the founder of the | movement.

But the forceful directness of Brieux, the brilliant | flashes of Shaw, and the uncanny mental vivisections of | Wells pale before the magnificence of Ibsen. The | Norwegian genius embodied in his creations the strong | features of each, almost to the extent of reducing them | to the rank of mere echoes of himself. Not that any one | of the three consciously modelled himself upon Ibsen | - rather should we compare Shaw, Wells, | Brieux to chords capable of vibrating to but a single | motif of some cosmic music, whereas the highly strung | soul of Ibsen served as a fitting vehicle for many. In | "Ghosts" his | treatment of the inheritance of disease is as grimly | blunt as Brieux's. | "A Doll's House" and | | "The Lady from the Sea" afford us | brilliant examples of analysis of motive not to be | surpassed in Shaw at his best. Again, | | "The Vikings of Helgeland" | presents the heroic, the romantic, and the tragic | interwoven, yet contrasted, in a manner only comparable | with Wagner.

IBSEN THE MAN.

Henrik Ibsen was born in 1828 in a small Norwegian | town. His boyhood was marked by the growth of artistic | cravings, which poverty prevented him from gratifying. | After an apprenticeship to a chemist, which brought him | to his twenty-second year, he succeeded in getting to | Christiana, and secured minor theatrical posts, first | at Bergen, later in the capital. Even before he left | the country, his literary talent had found expression | in some poems, and during his sojourn in Bergen and | Christiania he wrote one play - which no | one read - and numerous political | satires. The latter ventures resulted in his exile from | Norway, where he did not return until 1891. In Italy, | during the first few years after he left his native | land, he wrote two dramatic poems, which immediately | raised him to the front rank among his contemporaries, | and, incidentally, won him a literary pension from the | Norwegian Government.

His great prose plays occupied twenty-three years of | his life - from 1877 to 1900 - | the last of the series being published six | years before his death. - "A Doll's | House," one of the first, a plea for woman's | right of individual development, appeared in | Christiania in 1879, and roused a howl of fury from the | monogamic-harem moralists of the country. When | "Ghosts" | followed the howl increased to an almost inconceivable pitch | – something like the insensate | "give-us-revenge" scream to which Western Australia was treated | by opponents of Labor's criminological reform policy | when what was known as the "Bennett case" was before | the public.

Ibsen's retort was | "An Enemy of the People." This play, in | many respects curiously like | | "The Mob," of Galsworthy, tells of | the experience of a doctor, who, in return for an | appointment as medical officer to a health resort | municipality, was inconsiderate enough to point out | that their much-boomed mineral baths were in reality | the poisonous filterings from a tannery. What happened | can be guessed, or, should the reader's apprehension be | somewhat dull on the point, let us beg him to recall | the fate of every man who, for love of his country, | found courage to tell his countrymen their faults. From | Euripides to "the agitator they hanged o' Saturday," | the reply of the country has been couched in terms of | brickbats and batons.

DEGENERATION.

Nordau's book may be said to be an admirable guide | to incorrect conclusions. The pessimistic doctor set | himself out to lay, and to the best of his ability, to | sustain every conceivable charge savoring of decadence | that could possibly be made against the art and artists | of the past century. It may be said to be a useful | volume because, as Bernard Shaw says in his reply to | Nordau ("The Sanity | of Art"), |

No doubt there are degenerate artists. After all, | the question is, where do you draw the line? We prefer | to draw it in the neighbourhood of that rascally, and | (thank the gods!) imaginary creation of Shaw's in | "The Doctor's | Dilemma," who declares that a true artist will | allow wife and child to starve in the gutter rather | than desert his art. Nordau on the other hand, draws it | in the neighbourhood of William Shakespeare.

SCIENCE AND POETRY.

Of course, there are occasional would-be champions | of art who deserve a hard knock or two. A perpetrator | of heresies like that just quoted from | | "The Doctor's Dilemma," is an | example. Another intolerable nuisance is the | mischievous and affected humbug who indulges in cheap | attacks on science. We forget for the moment who it was | that sneered at "the chemist, with his nose stuck in a | stinking test-tube," but whoever he was, he deserves | the appelation of "philistine," equally with the member | of the committee of the Houseboat on the Styx who | declared the raw materials for the manufacture of | poetry to be "paper pens, and ink." The truth is that a | chemical formula is as much a cosmic verity as the | music of the spheres; the atomic hypothesis, or the | theory of evolution as pregnant with pro-Lear.

Another maudlin attack upon phecy as the Book of Job | or King science tells us that she has banished the | fairies from the green, and the dryads from the trees, | etc. To us this appears as a heresy, not against | science, but against poetry. Science deals with | material facts. Its duty is to banish the wraiths and | gnomes of superstition. But the most materialistic of | the scientific literateurs - H. G. Wells | - freely admits the angel of Art (in | "The Wonderful | Visit"). Poetry deals with ultimate realities, | and although vitally concerned with the angel of Art, | has as little as science to do with the material | spirits of superstition. The believer in material | spirits is the grossest of materialists. His | translation of everything into terms of matter condemns | him as utterly devoid of spiritual vision. He is not a | spiritual man, but merely a ghost-monger. And ghosts | and ghost-mongers are the hereditary enemies of | Science, Poetry, and Progress.

The personal gods of ancient superstition were slain | by Christianity. But has Christianity robbed the world | of the marvellous treasure house of the ancient myths? | Rather the reverse. In freeing them from fleshy form, | it has preserved them for ever as poetic concepts. | Their acknowledged unreality alone has made them real. | For ever are the pot-bellied Bacchus and the vengeful | Minerva banished to the shades. But Dionysos, poetic | inspiration, and Pallas, divine wisdom, live and reign | forever.