The Quintessence of Ibsenism

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Brentano's, 1913 - 240 pages

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Page 28 - And in poetry, no less than in life, he is * a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.
Page 36 - Stead himself wrote as one infatuated with her mere diary, and pleased himself by representing her as a person who fascinated everybody, and was a source of delight to all about her by the mere exhilaration and hope-giving atmosphere of her wilfulness. The truth is, that in real life a self-sacrificing woman, or, as Stead would have put it, a womanly woman, is not only taken advantage of, but disliked as well for her pains. No man pretends that his soul finds its supreme satisfaction in self-sacrifice:...
Page 46 - The sum of the matter is that unless Woman repudiates her womanliness, her duty to her husband, to her children, to society, to the law, and to everyone but herself, she cannot emancipate herself.
Page 196 - And since life" consists in the fulfilment of the will, which is constantly growing, and cannot be fulfilled today under the conditions which secured its fulfilment yesterday, he claims afresh the old Protestant right of private judgment in questions of conduct as against all institutions, the so-called Protestant Churches themselves included. Here I must leave the matter, merely reminding those who may think that I have forgotten to reduce Ibsenism to a formula for them, that its quintessence is...
Page 3 - The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.
Page 219 - ... by actors, nor the pretence of falling down dead that ends the stage combat, nor the simulation of erotic thrills by a pair of stage lovers, nor any of the other tomfooleries called action, but the exhibition and discussion of the character and conduct of stage figures who are made to appear real by the art of the playwright and the performers. This, then, is the extension of the old dramatic form effected by Ibsen. Up to a certain point in the last act...
Page 4 - An open drain; a loathsome sore unbandaged; a dirty act done publicly; a lazar-house with all its doors and windows open.
Page 45 - to think that the nursery and the kitchen are the natural sphere of a woman, we have done so exactly as English children come to think that a cage is the natural sphere of a parrot: because they have never seen one anywhere...

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