Strindberg's Ibsen

Barbara Lide Michigan Technological University STRINDBERG’S IBSEN: ADMIRED, EMULATED, SCORNED, AND PARODIED In 1893, when August Strindberg was living in Berlin, he posed for a portrait painted by the Norwegian artist Christian Krogh. Krogh reportedly painted seven portraits of Strindberg at this time, one of which was purchased by Henrik Ibsen. As is well known, Ibsen hung that portrait of Strindberg on the wall of his study, and he has been quoted as saying that he could not write a line without having that “madman staring down at him with his crazy eyes.” Ibsen’s words could, of course, be taken as a lefthanded compliment, for on the one hand, while Strindberg might have provided inspiration – by perhaps furthering the spirit of competition in Ibsen – on the other hand, Strindberg represented “madness.” Also, Ibsen is reported to have said, “He is my mortal enemy, and shall hang there and watch while I write.” (Meyer, p. 266) Yet the actor and director August Lindberg tells about how he once was asked by Ibsen, who never had met Strindberg, if the portrait was a good likeness of Strindberg, and then, “in a whisper,” which, according to Lindberg, Ibsen “perhaps did not intend to be heard, muttered, ‘A remarkable man!’”(M. Meyer, III, p. 253; Lindberg, p. 308). While Strindberg had no portraits of Ibsen hanging in his study, he certainly had formed for himself an image of Ibsen – an image that underwent changes from the time he first read, and was enthralled by, Brand, (with its ruthless idealism), through the “Doll House Years,” when he condemned Ibsen for becoming a “bluestocking” and referred to him in his letters as “Fru Ibsen,” –and again through the years of stiff competition on the stages of Europe, when Strindberg, younger than Ibsen by 21 years, was trying to supercede him as the greatest writer of Scandinavian drama. One of the ironies about this competition is that frequently literary and theatre people outside Scandinavia – especially in Paris – often