A DRAMATIC EPILOGUE IN THREE ACTS.
Translated by William Archer
Ibsen’s last play was written in Christiania in 1899. There were many factors that distracted him from writing When We Dead Awaken. At the time he was involved in planning the first two collected editions of his works, including a German edition, published in nine volumes by the historians of literature Julius Elias and Paul Schlenther from 1898-1903, and the Norwegian edition, published by Danish Gyldendal in nine volumes from 1898 to 1900. Also, in the spring of 1898 Ibsen celebrated his seventieth birthday, with large-scale festivities held for him in Christiania, Copenhagen and Stockholm. He made speeches, gave interviews and received frequent visits in Christiania, further impeding the writing process of When We Dead Awaken until the beginning of 1899.
The title of the play was changed twice during the writing of the fair copy, first to ‘The Day of Resurrection’, then to ‘When The Dead Awaken’ and then finally to ‘When We Dead Awaken’. The fair copy of the manuscript was sent to the publisher the same day as it was completed, November 21, 1899. The full title of the play, When We Dead Awaken. A Dramatic Epilogue in Three Acts, was advertised before the book was for sale by the Danish newspaper Politiken, claiming that ‘epilogue’ signified that “the writer has spoken his last words in this play and has thus concluded his dramatic works”. Nevertheless, this claim was denied by Ibsen himself in an interview in the newspaper Verdens Gang on December 12, 1899.
When We Dead Awaken was published by Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag on December 22nd 1899 in Copenhagen, Christiania, Stockholm and Berlin, and consisted of 12,000 copies. A second issue of 2,000 copies had to be printed even before the book was on sale, on account of the large number of advance orders. Consequently, 14,000 copies altogether were released simultaneously. The book was received with positive regard.
The first full staging of the play was at the Hoftheater in Stuttgart on January 26, 1900, followed shortly afterwards by productions in Copenhagen, Helsingfors, Christiania, Stockholm and Berlin. It proved difficult to make the play function satisfactorily on the stage, as Edvard Brandes wrote in connection with his production, “The actors were too small”.
The first act is set outside a spa overlooking a fjord, where we are introduced to the sculptor Arnold Rubek and his wife Maia, who are reading newspapers and drinking champagne. They marvel at how quiet the spa is. Their conversation is light-hearted, but Arnold hints at a general unhappiness with his life and Maia also hints at disappointment. Arnold had promised to take her to a mountaintop to see the whole world as it is, but they have never done so.
The hotel manager passes by with some guests and inquires if the Rubeks need anything. During their encounter, a mysterious woman dressed in white passes by, followed closely by a nun in black. Arnold is drawn to her for some reason. The manager does not know much about her, and he tries to excuse himself before Squire Ulfheim can spot him. Unable to do so, Ulfheim corners him and requests breakfast for his hunting dogs. Spotting the Rubeks, he introduces himself and mocks their plans to take a cruise, insisting that the water is too contaminated by other people. He is stopping at the spa on his way to a mountain hunt for bears, and he insists that the couple should join him, as the mountains are unpolluted by people.
The play is dominated by images of stone and petrification — the process by which organic material is converted into stone through the replacement of the original material. Ibsen’s final play is a despairing work, full of probing questions as to what it is to have truly lived a life and not to have wasted it.