Maybe there is a better post-Shakespeare interpreter of the
human soul than Ibsen. The rime of the ancient northerner. But I’m at a loss to
know her. Cold and wet and how can we feel God, when the spirit rises, the
wicked lays bare in adultery, philandering, incest and alcohol abuse, all in
stark relief against the unpromised land, ridges of fjords where the light of
Paris, the lamp glow of London is but reflected in tortured memory.
So Madame Alving believes in “Ghosts,” as she says near the
end of Act One: “Ghosts – Those two in the conservatory – Ghosts – They’ve come
to life again!”
Madame Alving must believe in ghosts in order to follow
through with what her destiny – not fate, she has taken too much of an active
hand in events – is to be. (Spoiler alert: No, I won’t tell you the ending
here!) In the minor art of TV, it is like Betty Francis (Draper) of “Mad Men,”
whose choice in the penultimate episode also is stark but certain.
I believe in “Ghosts,” the play by Henrik Ibsen, in ways that
I believe in “My Struggle” by Karl Ove Knausgaard, his fellow Norwegian. They
do not spare us. By my lights, great art should not.
Next: Running for Your Life: Knausgaard, Some Notes
