These had now been
excluded for nearly twenty years, since the publication of _Peer Gynt_,
and he would not resume them so far as to write his dramas again in
verse. Verse in drama was doomed; or if not, it was at least a juvenile
and fugitive skill not to be rashly picked up again by a business-like
bard of sixty. But he would reopen the door to allegory and symbol, and
especially to fantastic beauty of landscape.
The landscape of Rosmersholm has all, or at least much, of the old
enchantment. The scene at the mill-dam links us once more with the woods
and the waters which we had lost sight of since _Peer Gynt_. But this
element was still more evident in _The Lady from the Sea_, which was.
published in 1888. We have seen that Ibsen spent long hours, in the
summer of 1885, at the end of the pier at Molde, gazing down into the
waters, or watching the steamers arriving and departing, coming from the
great sea beyond the fjord or going towards it. As was his wont, he
stored up these impressions, making no immediate use of them. He
actually prepared _The Lady from the Sea_ in very different, although
still marine surroundings.
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