Ibsen and the Immoralists

The germinal idea for Ibsen's Hedda Gabler is to be found in a public controversy in 1889 and 1890 between Georg Brandes, whose lectures had introduduced Nietzsche to the intellectual world in 1888, and Professor Harald Høffding, the most highly esteemed Danish philosopher at the time. The radical Brandes had already won a reputation as an immoralist because of his position in the so-called "morality feud" that raged through Scandinavia during the mid- 1880's; and the philistine's image of him as a Lucifer was vivified by his espousal of Nietzsche's philosophy, and by the fact that an affair he had with the Swedish novelist Victoria Benedictsson (who wrote under the name of Ernst Ahlgren) culminated in her suicide in 1888. Out of Brandes and Nietzsche, Ibsen created the composite Løvborg, while Professor Høffding became Professor Tesman. Ibsen identified himself most closely with the repressed Hedda, the woman who sided with Løvborg but did not dare reveal her true self for fear of scandal. (ES)