My initial thoughts upon completing Ibsen's play, "The Wild Duck" was that I had somehow read a Norwegian version of "The Grand Inquisitor" out of Dostoyevsky's novel, The Brothers Karamazov.
In this novel, the Grand Inquisitor, head of the church, berates Christ for giving mankind the curse of freedom which it is incapable of living with. The Inquisitor claims to have rescued mankind from Christ’s sacrifice by taking their freedom from them and placing them in bondage to the church. An additional link to Ibsen is the prominent theme of the suffering and death of innocent children—which is required for Christ’s freedom to exist on earth.
My proposition is that Hjalmar is the Grand Inquisitor's double: upbraiding the idealistic Gregors for destroying the "life-lie" that Hjalmar had created for mankind to protect them from themselves as the Inquisitor created the Church to shield man from the freedom Christ had so thoughtlessly forced upon them. In both Dostoyevsky and Ibsen, a life free of lies, a life of freedom and light are ideals under which man is made to suffer terribly without the kindly intervention of lies. Ibsen's play gives life to the amorphous philosophy of Dostoyevsky. Where Dostoyevsky spoke in the theoretical, Ibsen imposed Dostoyevsky's theories on the lives of his characters and studied their reactions accordingly.
The following is a brief excerpt taken from The Grand Inquisitor chapter of the Brother's Karamazov:
And blind faith remained alone. / To lull the trusting heart, /
As heav'n would send a sign no more. . . .
For the mystery of human being does not
solely rest in the desire to live, but in the problem--for what
should one live at all? Without a clear perception of his reasons
for living, man will never consent to live, and will rather
destroy himself than tarry on earth, though he be surrounded with
bread. This is the truth. But what has happened? Instead of
getting hold of man's freedom, Thou has enlarged it still more! Hast Thou again forgotten that to man rest and even death are preferable to a free choice between the knowledge of Good and Evil? Nothing seems more seductive in his eyes than freedom of conscience, and nothing proves more painful. And behold! instead of laying a firm foundation whereon to rest once for all man’s conscience, Thou hast chosen to stir up in him all that is abnormal, mysterious, and indefinite, all that is beyond human strength, and has acted as if Thou never hadst any love for him, and yet Thou wert He who came to "lay down His life for His friends!" Thou hast burdened man's soul with anxieties hitherto unknown to him. . . .
There are three Powers, three unique Forces upon earth, capable of conquering for ever by charming the conscience of these weak rebels--men--for their own good; and these Forces are: Miracle, Mystery and Authority
The following is an excerpt taken from Ibsen's play "The Wild Duck":
Relling: People are sick just about everywhere, unfortunately.
Gregers: And what cure do you prescribe for Hjalmar?
Relling: The usual one. I try to keep the life-lie going within him.
Gregers: Life-lie? I didn’t quite catch--?
Relling: That’s right, I said the life-lie. Because the life-lie is the vitalizing principle, you see.
Gregers: Might I ask what kind of life-lie Hjalmar is injected with?
Relling: No way. I don’t divulge professional secrets to quak-salvers. You’d then be in a position to mess him up even more. But the method’s effective. I’ve applied it to Molvik as well. Him I made “demonic.” That is the treatment I use to keep him going.
Gregers: Then he isn’t demonic?
Relling: What the devil does it mean, to be demonic? That was just some nonsense I thought up to let him go on living. If I hadn’t, the poor, harmless swine would have broken down in self-contempt and despair many years ago.
Intentional or not, Ibsen wrote a perfect shadow of Dostoyevsky's work. Though how can we blame him, when all of mankind has been troubling over the same ideas and thoughts for uncountable millennia.
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