Ibsen the incendiary, unrepentant, insurgent humanist

This essay was first published (and beautifully edited) by Greg Baxter at Some Blind Alleys

see
http://someblindalleys.com/index.php/2009/11/10/ibsen-the-incendiary-unrepentant-insurgent-humanist/#more-3716

During the summer, I completed a new literary translation of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House for Dublin’s Secondage Theatre Company. As far as I am aware, the last Irish person to translate Ibsen into English was James Joyce. Thus I stand on hallowed ground and bow my head in deference to these two giants.

Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House signalled a seismic artistic shift, not only in the history of theatre, but also in the world of literary and political discourse. The first ever production of A Doll’s House was staged in Copenhagen’s Royal Theatre in December 1879, and when, at the end of the play, Nora Helmer quietly closed the gate on her old life as an apparently solidly bourgeois and respectable housewife, nothing would ever be the same again. Léigh an t-alt uilig - Read Full Article....