FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124  
125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   >>  
o endless conversation. The episode was strange, the passion improbable, incomprehensible, profoundly natural and true. Perhaps, until they parted in the last days of September, neither the old man nor the young girl realized what their relations had meant to each. Youth secured its revenge, however; Miss Bardach soon wrote from Vienna that she was now more tranquil, more independent, happy at last. Ibsen, on the other hand, was heart-broken, quivering with ecstasy, overwhelmed with joy and despair. It was the enigma in his "princess," as he called her; that completed Miss Bardach's sorcery over the old poet. She seems to have been no coquette; she flung her dangerous fascinations at his feet; she broke the thread which bound the charms of her spirit and poured them over him. He, for his part, remaining discreet and respectful, was shattered with happiness. To a friend of mine, a young Norwegian man of letters, Ibsen said about this time: "Oh, you can always love, but I am happier than the happiest, for I am beloved." Long afterwards, on his seventieth birthday, when his own natural force was failing, he wrote to Miss Bardach, "That summer at Gossensass was the most beautiful and the most harmonious portion of my whole existence. I scarcely venture to think of it, and yet I think of nothing else. Ah! forever!" He did not dare to send her _The Master-Builder_, since her presence interpenetrated every line of it like a perfume, and when, we are told, she sent him her photograph, signed "Princess of Orangia," her too-bold identification of herself with Hilda Wangel hurt him as a rough touch, that finer tact would have avoided. There can be no doubt at all that while she was now largely absorbed by the compliment to her own vanity, he was still absolutely enthralled and bewitched, and that what was fun to her made life and death to him. This very curious episode [Note: It was quite unknown until the correspondence--which has not been translated into English--was published by Georg Brandes at the desire of the lady herself (September, 1906).], which modifies in several important respects our conception of the dramatist's character, is analogous with the apparent change of disposition which made Renan surprise his unthinking admirers so suddenly at the epoch of _L'Eau de Jouvence_ and _L'Abbesse de Jouarre_. It was founded, of course, on that dangerous susceptibility to which an elderly man of genius, whose life had been s
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124  
125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   >>  



Top keywords:

Bardach

 

dangerous

 

episode

 
September
 
natural
 

Princess

 
Master
 

forever

 

Builder

 

Orangia


absorbed
 

largely

 

signed

 

photograph

 

avoided

 
perfume
 

interpenetrated

 

Wangel

 

identification

 
compliment

presence

 
disposition
 

surprise

 

unthinking

 

change

 

apparent

 

dramatist

 
conception
 

character

 

analogous


admirers

 

founded

 

Jouarre

 

susceptibility

 

elderly

 

Abbesse

 

suddenly

 

genius

 

Jouvence

 

respects


curious

 

unknown

 

absolutely

 

enthralled

 

bewitched

 

correspondence

 
modifies
 

important

 

desire

 

Brandes