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Ibsen Volume III: Four Plays |
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The
Lady from the Sea Little Eyolf John Gabriel Borkman When We Dead Awaken |
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Available for purchase through: Little Eyolf In this mysteriously beautiful play, Alfred and Rita Allmers first lose their crippled child, Eyolf who is lured to his death after the visit of an uncanny figure from folk-legend, the Rat Wife. The parents then descend into a hell of mutual recrimination and estrangement, realizing they neither loved their child nor each other. A drama set in the spring or early summer, the play dramatizes sexual passion and its consequences. The raw expression of emotional and psychological desolation is accompanied by a rich pantheistic imagery that explores the mysterious operation upon human life of the natural world into which the human drama extends. All the traditional four elements of the cosmos seem actively involved in the human drama: the earth to which Allmers and Rita are 'bound' with its gold and green forests, its lavish presence of plants and trees of every scene; the water (fjord and sea) as the agent of loss, with the 'undertow' that takes the drowned child out into its immensities and sends up the water lilies that shoot up from the depths; the air that carries the distant sounds of ships bells and children's' voices and especially the heartrending cry, "the crutch is floating" (krykken flyter); and, beyond the peaks of the earth, the fires of the stars that look down like eyes upon the desolate Allmers and Rita. The play concludes invoking the 'spirits' of this cosmos as if all human elements finally dissolve into it. Though too little known by modern audiences, Little Eyolf has again and again proved a memorable experience in the theatre as well as in the study. |
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