On 7 March 1907 Brandes gave his lecture in the Urania Theatre, an imposing lecture room in one of the most prestigious areas of Budapest. The lecture was delivered in French after all, and a Hungarian translation was published in Ar Újság (The Newspaper), the newspaper of the Liberal Party, which had quite a large circulation. With his usual subtle insight and sense of occasion Brandes took as his point of departure Ibsen's personal relationship with Hungary, including his visit there in 1891, of which he always spoke very warmly. With due regard for national feelings, Brandes referred to a poem by the youthful Ibsen that was dedicated to Hungary, praising the Hungarians' brave struggle against a superior power during the 1848 Revolution:
Ja, naar kjickt de unge Slacgter haevnende mod Thronen farer som en H0storkan og styrter Tyranniets Grundpillarer, Da skal Magyarernavnet stolt ved sine Heltes Hacder, som et vakkert L0sen tordne fra de seirende G e l e d e r t
(When daringly the nation's youths storm forth against the throne Like harvest gales, avenging, and leave oppression prone, Then shall the word Magyar, with honour 'mongst the flanks, Resound and act as symbol to the triumphant ranks!)
"Thus, in a sense, Ibsen also belongs to Hungary," concluded Brandes. As on an earlier lecture tour of Poland, he managed to hit the right note to gain
the sympathy of his audience, while also displaying his awareness of the political situation of his host country.
Brandes always regarded the struggles of oppressed peoples for national sovereignty as an important expression of a nation's vitality and intellectual vigour. In his speech, however, he pointed out that the kind of national pride that takes the form of total detachment from external influences and a feeling of self-sufficiency, is dangerous. This attitude, which dismisses foreign influences as unnecessary or harmful, deprives the country in question of opportunities for development. But he was courteous enough to say that the Hungarians could hardly be accused of holding that particular view. This part of the lecture was especially tailored to fit Hungarian conditions, insofar as the same problems were dealt with in his article "Ibsen in France".-^ Brandes was less cautious in his remarks to the French, when he pointed out that "in France, a very strong national, indeed nationalistic, reaction gradually set in, not only as far as Ibsen was concerned, but against any kind of foreign influence. A burgeoning self-esteem replaced the earlier receptivencss."^-'
There is a clear pattern discernible in Brandes' presentation, which must naturally be seen in the context of his general view of literature and which today would be called Wirkungsgeschichte or Rezeptionsästhetik. Adopting the point of view of the recipient, Brandes attempts to explain why Ibsen's plays seem to be so alien and so inaccessible outside Scandinavia.
The reason why some critics have found parts of Ibsen incomprehensible or obscure can be found in their ignorance of the environment in which his work was created. In order to achieve a deep understanding of a literary personality, one has to know his background, find out who his predecessors were, what the circumstances of his upbringing were, and who influenced him. In order to understand the literature of a country, one has to be familiar with the moral climate and the customs of that country:
For we can truly say, with a clear conscience: ... Assessments of Scandinavian literature will be of little value to us if they are made by men who know nothing of our life and customs, who are thus in no position to judge how the work compares with the conditions that arc being described, by men who have even less knowledge of our language and literature and therefore cannot pass any judgement on the strength and elegance of the language that is such an important element of poetry, any more than they can have any idea of the national tradition that lies behind the literary work.^6
Brandes applied these ideas to Hungarian conditions, too, boldly intimating that the Hungarians must have experienced this phenomenon in connection with their own literature over the years, since the language had cut their country off from the "common market" ( s i c a n d the great Hungarian poets had constantly been misinterpreted because of that ignorance of Hungary's historical reality. On the other hand, if the Hungarians did have anything against Ibsen, it should not be attributed to the strangeness of his plays, but rather to the general difficulties involved in understanding him. Brandes stressed that "one cannot expect a work of literature to be as clear as electric light. This is partly bccause it is not a characteristic of literature and partly because life does not have the clarity of electric light cither. And the work should reflect life. The power of great works of art does not lie in their perfect clarity, neither Hamlet nor Madách's The Tragedy of Man is completely p e n e t r a b l e . " ^
Superficial translations are often responsible for the blurring of linguistic clarity. The naturalness of a dialogue is the first thing that is lost in translation. Brandes cites an extract from Edmond de Goncourt's diary in which the French writer comments that the language in The Wild Duck is unnatural. Goncourt must simply have felt that the world in which Ibsen lived was too remote from him. Brandes explained that the reader who is close to a literary movement soon discovers the models that these writers use in their work and therefore appreciates the powers of description, the imagination and independence of the writer in question. The foreign critic, however, who knows neither the language, the moral framework nor the background of the writer can only understand the work if he compares it with literary texts with which he is already familiar. And he connects the impressions that arise during the reading with similar impressions from earlier reading experiences. The very effort on the part of the reader to understand the work lessens the sense of the new work's originality. That is what happened to Ibsen's work in France: Zola compared Ibsen with George Sand, and this casual idea was taken up and developed by Francisque Sarcey and Jules Lcmaitre. In Germany, however, Ibsen was received as one of the greatest of all naturalists, comparable with Zola and Tolstoy, and Freie Bühne für modernes Leben played an important role in bringing this about.
In his lecture, Brandes emphasized that there were of course a number of influences on Ibsen, but his originality was in no way diminished by having learnt from his predecessors. He also explained that whenever anyone is daring enough to say that Ibsen's drama does not contain anything that is truly original, it is because new thoughts and ideas are not discovered by writers, philosophers or scientists. Nothing in literature is completely new.
What is important in Ibsen is the innovation in dramatic technique; and in this area he was revolutionary.
In the second part of the lecture, in order to develop further his statement about the necessary link between knowledge of the milieu and literary tradition of the writer and the understanding and appropriation of the work, Brandes gave an analysis of the Norwegian society that Ibsen depicted in Hedda Gabler.
In his evaluation of Norwegian society, Brandes drew attention to "the formlessness of forthrightness" and to a certain "coarseness of thought and speech", where the "rigid reservation" and "total openness" are found side by sidc.29 Understandably enough, Brandes contrasted Hungarian society with Norwegian society in order to reveal the special characteristics of the latter:
Norwegian society is depicted in this play, as in the others, as a society without nobility and without any aristocratic tradition. The entire intellectual aristocracy of this society, its greatest talents in poetry, the visual arts and music, almost without exception, have for decades spent nearly all their time outside the country*-^
Brandes presented this picture of an unpolished milieu in order to highlight the "national vitality" discernible in Norway, which "in the last generation has succeeded in bringing forth great and fresh natural abilities".
But the society cannot offer enough opportunities for the development and nourishment of these abilities and that is why such a natural force as Hedda Gabler must necessarily be destroyed.
On the question of whether Ibsen's female characters are in fact Norwegian female types, Brandes explained that a good dramatist creates individuals, not types. He saw the character of Hedda Gabler as more cosmopolitan than specifically Norwegian. The figure of Hedda has the universality that ensures that the character can be understood everywhere.
Brandes unquestionably put his finger on the intention behind the play by interpreting it as a study of a woman in whose character the elevated, the evil and the decadent co-exist.
Brandes' natural inclination towards making comparisons can also be seen in his character sketch of Hedda. He compared her with female characters in the plays of Ibsen's youth, Catalina, The Feast at Solhaug and The Vikings at Helgoland. The point of this comparison was that in Brandes' opinion, Ibsen divides "a brilliant masculinity between two women, a wild one and a gentle one, a Valkyrie and a Nurse".^ But Brandes stressed that Hedda is much more of a composite character who, despite her negative personality traits.
arouses the audience's sympathy when she dies. And this sympathy is extended to the whole of humanity. In this way, Brandes also touched on the very nature of tragedy.
That such an experienced speaker chose to base his lecture on his previous essays on Ibsen, was due to a desire to put Hedda Gabler into perspective for the Hungarian audience which, according to Hedda Lenkei, knew very little about Ibsen's work. Brandes obviously put a lot of effort into its preparation. The lecture shows clear signs of having been constructed with a Hungarian public in mind. At the end, Brandes addressed himself directly to his audience:
It is by sheer coincidence that on both my visits to Budapest I have talked about Ibsen. H e was a good friend of mine but I am not his apostle. And although I prefer to advocate my own causes rather than those of others, I am by no means displeased to serve him here, a second timc.32