Product Description

This high-spirited poetical fantasy, based on Norwegian folklore, is the story of an irresponsible, lovable hero. After its publication, Ibsen abandoned the verse form for more realistic prose plays.

Product Details

• Published on: 1970-07-01
• Original language: Norwegian
• Binding: Paperback

Review
Five-act verse play by Henrik Ibsen, published in Norwegian in 1867 and produced in 1876. The title character, based on a legendary Norwegian folk hero, is a rogue who is saved by the love of a woman. Peer Gynt is a charming but arrogant peasant youth who leaves his widowed mother in order to seek his fortune. Confident of success, he has one disastrous adventure after another. In one, he attends the wedding of the wealthy young woman he himself might have married. There he meets Solveig, who falls in love with him. He impulsively abducts the bride from her wedding celebration and subsequently abandons her. Peer Gynt embarks on a series of fantastic voyages around the world, finding wealth and fame but never happiness. Finally, as an old, disillusioned man, he returns to Norway, where Solveig, ever faithful, welcomes him lovingly, and he is redeemed. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

Review

"Distinguished by the union of wit and sentiment which marks the Norwegian original....Invites the reader to "feel out the sinew" of the master's varied poetic rhythms; and it is a pleasure to do so in this new version, which is crafted in British rather than American English....Along with the informative and inviting introduction, endnotes give background essential to a fuller appreciation of this 1867 masterpiece....Recommended for all libraries."--Choice

Language Notes
Text: English, Norwegian (translation)

Customer Reviews

the emptiness of prodigality.
Often funny. Often bizarre. Always deep. Peer Gynt first appears to me as this self-centered youth who cares only for himself and the satisfaction of his impulses and whims at any cost. He is the quick non-thinker, who leaves a life of relative conventionality to roam as a dissolute wanderer. He is indeed all of these things, but all the while his "self" is not "centered". At the end of his adventures as a libertine, the grey-bearded Peer Gynt is at a cross-roads, and he asks the character of the Button Moulder this question: "What, after all, is this being one's self?" The Button Moulder replies that being one's self means slaying one's Self, and furthermore "observing the Master's intentions in all things." Peer Gynt contemplates this... restraint and delayed gratification have never been manageable themes with him. In my opinion, this whole idea of the search for the "self" is what Peer Gynt is all about. At the very final crossroads he is redeemed by the undeserved forgiveness and love of Solvieg, the woman he has once abandoned... this scene being a beautiful picture of the grace and love of God that is available to the Peer Gynt in every reader.

Ibsen originally wrote Peer Gynt as a poem, and therefore we lose the Norwegian rhyme and metre in any English translation. To compensate if at all possible, I suggest reading the play while listening to the incidental music of Edvard Grieg, specifically composed to accompany the live performance of Peer Gynt. (Note: My review is based on the translation by Peter Watts).

The Charm of a Trickster...
Peer Gynt is a piece of literature that, like Goethe's Faust Part II plays best on the stage of the imagination. It is too lengthy and costly to be performed on stage. Sometimes the first three acts are performed together, sometimes the last two acts are brought together to become a whole for a theatre production.

In terms of reading, this is a great fable piece. Peer is the Trickster with the mirror to his conscience. As a youth, he is Troll-like in his lusts, in his carousing. In his middle-age, he is Troll-like in his financial enterprises. At the end of his life, he is a folorn man, having given up possible true love to run around in search of his self. He is a fraud but we feel sympathy for him. He pursues life in search of distractions and power but ends up empty at the end, soon to be the vicim of the Button Moulder, soon to be nothing more than a button.

This work has many levels and open to numerous interpretations. Ideally, this is the book you read for a book club. There is nothing conventional about it. The conversations will be endless and the philosophy inspired, well, might be inspiring.

Difficult. Surreal.
Peer Gynt is a sort of folk tale character who we see go from being a young man to an old man and who gets in several different adventures. The play doesn't have much of a plot exactly. It starts of in a Norwegian village where Peer is a buffoonish character. He leaves the village, meets up with Trolls, gets in a shipwreck, wanders around the desert, and runs into the button moulder. All of this just happens, disconnectedly. He spends time in America also, but we aren't shown that.

There is a lot of talk about being your self, being authentic, etc. If the play has a theme, I am guessing that's it.

It's completely different from Ibsen's realistic works like An Enemy of the People or The Wild Duck. I'm more a fan of those works. Peer Gynt didn't really speak to me.

On a side note, in the movie Educating Rita, with Michael Caine, Rita takes a test where one of the questions was 'What are some of the difficulties in staging Peer Gynt?' A: It's long. It's not in prose. It has trolls and other fantastical creatures. It has a huge cast many of whom are only on stage very briefly. The main character goes from being a youth to a very old man. The settings vary from a Norwegian village to Egypt and the Sphinx. This is why it's rarely done on stage.