Ghosts
GHOSTS by Henrik Ibsen Translated, with an Introduction, by William Archer INTRODUCTION. The winter of 1879-80 Ibsen spent in Munich, and the greater part of the summer of 1880 at Berchtesgaden. November 1880 saw him back in Rome, and he passed the summer of 1881 at Sorrento. There, fourteen years earlier, he had written the last acts of _Peer Gynt_; there he now wrote, or at any rate completed, _Gengangere_. It was published in December 1881, after he had returned to Rome. On December 22 he wrote to Ludwig Passarge, one of his German translators, "My new play has now appeared, and has occasioned a terrible uproar in the Scandinavian press; every day I receive letters and newspaper articles decrying or praising it. ... I consider it utterly impossible that any German theatre will accept the play at present. I hardly believe that they will dare to play it in the Scandinavian countries for some time to come." How
INTRODUCTION
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Homer, in all probability, knew no rules of rhetoric, and was not
tortured with the consideration of grammatical construction, and yet
his verse will endure through time. If everybody possessed the genius
of Homer, rules and cautions in writing would be unnecessary.
To-day all men speak, and most men write, but it is observed that
those who most closely follow Homer's method of writing without rules
are most unlike Homer in the results. The ancient bard was a law unto
himself; we need rules for our guidance.
Rules of writing are the outgrowth of the study of the characteristics
and qualities of style which distinguish the best writers from those
of inferior skill and ability. Grammarians and rhetoricians, according
to their several lines of investigation, set forth the laws and
principles governing speech, and formulate rules whereby we may follow
the true, and avoid the false.
Grammar and rhetoric, as too often presented in the schools, are such
uninviting studies that when
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GHOSTS by Henrik Ibsen Translated, with an Introduction, by William Archer INTRODUCTION. The winter of 1879-80 Ibsen spent in Munich, and the greater part of the summer of 1880 at Berchtesgaden. November 1880 saw him back in Rome, and he passed the summer of 1881 at Sorrento. There, fourteen years earlier, he had written the last acts of _Peer Gynt_; there he now wrote, or at any rate completed, _Gengangere_. It was published in December 1881, after he had returned to Rome. On December 22 he wrote to Ludwig Passarge, one of his German translators, "My new play has now appeared, and has occasioned a terrible uproar in the Scandinavian press; every day I receive letters and newspaper articles decrying or praising it. ... I consider it utterly impossible that any German theatre will accept the play at present. I hardly believe that they will dare to play it in the Scandinavian countries for some time to come." How