In other words, _Rosmersholm_ is the proof of Ibsen's desire to conquer
another field of drama. He had now for some years rejected with great
severity all temptations from the poetic spirit, which was nevertheless
ineradicable in him. He had wished to produce on the mind of the
spectator no other impression than that he was observing something which
had actually happened, exactly in the way and the words in which it
would happen. He had formulated to the actress, Lucie Wolf, the
principle that ideal dramatic poetry should be considered extinct, "like
some preposterous animal form of prehistoric times." But the soul of man
cannot be fed with a stone, and Ibsen had now discovered that perfectly
prosaic "slices of life" may be salutary and valuable on occasion, but
that sooner or later a poet asks for more. He, therefore, a poet if ever
there was one, had grown weary of the self-made law by which he had shut
himself out from Paradise. He determined, grudgingly, and hardly knowing
how to set about it, that he would once more give the spiritual and the
imaginative qualities their place in his work.
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