The sex question, as treated in _Little Eyolf_, recalls _The Kreutzer
Sonata_ (1889) of Tolstoi. When, however, I ventured to ask Ibsen
whether there was anything in this, he was displeased, and stoutly
denied it. What, an author denies, however, is not always evidence.
Nothing further of general interest happened to Ibsen until 1896, when
he sat down to compose another drama, _John Gabriel Borkman_. This was a
study of the mental adventures of a man of high commercial imagination,
who is artificially parted from all that contact with real affairs which
keeps such energy on the track, and who goes mad with dreams of
incalculable power, a study, in fact, of financial megalomania. It was
said, at the time, that Ibsen was originally led to make this analysis
of character from reading in the Christiania newspapers a report of the
failure and trial of a notorious speculator convicted of fraud in 1895,
and sentenced to a long period of penal servitude.
Whether this be so or not, we have in the person of John Gabriel Borkman
a prominent example of the ninteenth century type of criminous
speculator, in whom the vastness of view and the splendidly altruistic
audacity present themselves as elements which render it exceedingly
difficult to say how far the malefactor is morally responsible for his
crime.
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