Can to make photograph but not to install

The Norway celebrates the writer Henrik Ibsen, who, with the painter Edvard Munch and the composer Edvard Grieg, is one of its most illustrious children. "Doll House" author died 100 years ago, on May 23, 1906, in Oslo. The country multiplies the ceremonies to honour throughout the year. In fact, it will celebrate Ibsen around the world. Granddaughter Nora as the heroine of "Doll House" , began presenting a programme of celebrations in Oslo, said in perfect English: "It is a global event," making a list of some creations at the four corners of the globe: representations in Muslim countries, where the defence of women ibsénienne acquires a new edge, a staging of "Peer Gynt" in Cairo before the pyramidswhich are one of the decor of the room...

But it is better to pick up the traces of Ibsen in his Kingdom. Many performances, tours, tours, exhibitions are held on-site, Oslo and other points of the country. This is that roams its ghost, this is that guide the way so that it goes beyond appearances and seize the Norway noticeable and secret, visible and invisible.

Himalaya of dialogues

Read his theatre is not so easy, since read dialogues (in the case of Ibsen, a Himalaya of dialogues!) is an exercise which is not natural at all. It filled more readily poems, but there is no available French Edition. However, person better that Ibsen will give the keys to the viking nation whose geographic drawing seems to rotate throughout the territory of the Sweden. He liked his homeland so much and so long hoped his love that he stuck long away! Spaces, car parks and credit cards are today called Ibsen.

But the story began poorly. Born on 20 March 1828, in Skien, he was the son of a merchant of the city. Poor little Henrik forced to suffer the consequences of poor little gifted father for trading business! Constantly pulling the Devil by the tail, it is disposed never a fierce sense of economy. Having loved the theatre as a child, he could soon lead some rooms and was playing its parts without immediately achieving success. It published and represented his texts, but the State and sponsors the treated with disdain, that it was in Skien, Bergen or Christiana (the former name of Oslo).

Likely, bruised, never obtaining the appropriation requested, he preferred to go into exile. That would be the most illustrious of the Norwegians was long in conflict with the authorities of his country, defied them and the cursed! He lived twenty-seven years far from Oslo, in Rome, but also in various cities of Germany primarily. He regained his homeland at the August age of sixty-three years, after the phenomenal success of "hedda gabler". Before it opened, finally, a boulevard of honors and praise not prevented it to write again and again.

In the ink of Norway

But overseas, he attended that of Norse, and his pen was always immersed in ink of Norway. It affected not to open books to read than the press, that of Scandinavian countries. The legends of his homeland, the memory of the meditations to the sea, fjords and the snowy mountains with which it is measured to God impudently the haunted, while the structure of the Norwegian society, its wars of power and its scandals gave him the subjects of the parts where social concerns outweigh the Symbolist poetry. Jacques De Decker, who has just published an excellent biography of Ibsen and we crossed the streets of Oslo, we said, a few steps from the favourite coffee of the playwright: "Ibsen share any of this Norwegian heritage and begins to go beyond, to go always above, beyond this company, its philosophy, of religion." Everywhere he lived in a Norway real and ideal.

It helps to understand this country towns and countryside, civilized and wild, religious and pagan. The author of "The Lady of the sea" and "The enemy of the people", who lived in the bourgeois 19th century austerity and died in the tension of a 20th century who was preparing his first world war, yet had not the QuickDraw to a man of the Woods. All documents the are draped in black as a magister, closed, gruff, pushy, deprived of the ability to smile. The face is built behind fine glasses, around a thick hair sucked by an eternal top hat and huge favorites around the Chin in him giving a one-sided radiation.

The Ibsen-there seems to be solemn and arrogant. There is a happy drille! A cerebral Viking! Where are the trolls, these geniuses of the Norway, these elves of the forest and the mountain, these demons insolent and loving The writer appears to have driven them itself to too seek the respectability. In reality, Ibsen is also a troll. A troll with glasses, a troll in frac, a troll in frock coat. In mysterious Elf, he is mocked his life of the powerful and himself. "You lived in troll but hid it always", said an old man in Peer Gynt in the room (the poem River, the central work, the masterpiece!) with this name. The comment applies, and fully, to Ibsen.

The traveller when he landed at Oslo Gardermoen airport, takes the beautiful form of grey snake train which connects the Terminal to the city. Along the route, he sees on the snow, or on the grass, that the traditional wooden houses painted in dark red and

mustard yellow, spaced in the Valley and on the flanks of the hills. This is already the world of Ibsen, of the man defying the nature friend and enemy, of a severe Eden which conceals its truths behind the cold beauty of his appearances. If it is party in the footsteps of the author, the traveller can begin by go discover the birthplace of playwright. Oslo, browses 150 kilometres of highway for a stopover of a day or two in Skien (pronounced "chiyen") and climb up towards the House family of Venstop, has become Museum Ibsen.

Idol of his compatriots

Out of the city, in the heights, the farm is a big Red House, which extends by a green barn and a white dwelling house. In the body of farm, as the top hat became the symbolic object of the poet, a large cylinder which was given the form of a gigantic black hat offers, screenings of videos (excerpts from theatrical performances especially), a "route in the brain of Ibsen. In the House itself, can walk in small parts of the ground floor and the attic space.

Clues we prove or make us imagine that the young Henrik was hiding here and there, wrote about a cast iron stove, cut figurines, meditating in the landscape units and dreamed before the junk left in the attic by the previous occupant, a sailor left without retrieve the motley spoils of his congenial, atlas and including tortoiseshell.

Skien is a small town in the County of Telemark, a channel connects the North Sea. Ibsen is in odour of sanctity. His image and his characters are squares. The municipality has designed many projects for the centenary. But the traveller should leave the child Ibsen for the adult Ibsen in returning to the capital.

Oslo, the shadow of Ibsen is easy to catch! Just walk in the centre, in this straight city including landforms and colourful facades blur geometric rigour. When it finally became the idol of his countrymen, Ibsen was twice a day the same walk, at noon and 6 p.m.. He lived to the West of the royal castle and its Park he was the key to the Castle, King in had given her a double! , which is developing the centre of the city. From there it descended to reach Street Karl Johan, which connects the castle to Parliament, and was walking to the Grand Café of Grand Hotel. It took place behind the glass on the street, drank alcohol and moved again by the same path.

The broad artery which form a wooded central avenue with a parallel Street has changed little and elongates among white and yellow buildings. At the Grand Café, the Ibsen table is highlighted and retains its wood shelf ready to be served a glass and a top hat on a time log! A cardboard indicates that the place is "reserved for Henrik Ibsen". Can to make photograph, but not to install. In the same street, the beautiful national theatre camped on its arches and columns. Ibsen was known to him, he saw rise to two vert-de-grisées statues that stand in its bow: his own and that of his friend and rival, Bjornstjerne Bjornson, two glories of Norwegian theatre. He did not like his effigy. Indeed, stiff in a dark coat, he looks surly and grumpy!

In the centre of Oslo, the routes are in a few strides. Almost everything is within reach of the more lazy Walker: the pretty harbour which iron horse place some old ships and of modern vessels on a very blue water, the national galleries, where "The cry" of Munch which he designs for Ibsen is hanging between a Picasso and a Gauguin... For the apartment of the writer, become Museum, it enough to have the very relative ranging from Ibsen, who descended from Viking, was small and little sport. It rises to the left of the Castle and over an Italian restaurant, the Ibsen-Museet opens its doors and its long enfilade of rooms. Recently restored, it found its footprint of origin: the bourgeois then enjoyed countless executives, massive furniture, heavy curtains. The crossing of the Office of the writer is a poignant moment: while the decoration is the magnificent, working table is very humble, modest size.

Young and great rival

Its right, Ibsen had suspended a large portrait of Strindberg, the painter Christian Krogh had released the brutal and almost halluciné aspect. Strindberg, his young and large Swedish rival, who ceased to challenge him by its parts and its belligerent statements! Ibsen was every day the crazy eyes of the enemy and was in this mental duel forces which enabled him to repel the wounds of the age...

The Norway founded his art to live and to create new forms in the planning, design, fine arts on a harmony with nature of water, grassland, forests and snow. The nature in many thanked him: oil provides an opulent wealth in the country. By Ibsen, the visitor dives into a more domestic, more painful Norway also: consider his portraits from homes of theatre in museums. With time, its eyes are more tender and anxious, sad and fearful. He is the older brother of the little trolls. Not those found furry and Kashubian in the stalls of memories of Oslo. Those who embody and reversed by the poetic invention the ancestral fears of Northern land.