Dear Mr. Ibsen,
How cross you look.
And look at you. Up there on your plinth.
Up there because you’re a Great Man now,
And that’s where you’re supposed to be.
High above us.
So why so glum, Mr. I?
It’s true I didn’t actually mean to see you here, I was mostly just wandering about, so no, it’s not like I’m on a pilgrimage.
But still. Here I am, and I’m looking at you.
No-one else is.
But look at the huge building you’re in front of. The National Theatre of Norway.
In the best Grecian style. Good stone. Expensive.
Saying: theatre really matters.
And you did that. You made each work an Event.
And they still are, apparently.
They’re rehearsing your “John Gabriel Borkman” inside that building. Right now as we speak.
And later they’re doing “The Dance Of Death”. As a Christmas show.
You probably don’t really approve of that, you never thought much of Strindberg.
But still. More power to your Scandic gloom.
And it still sells tickets…
Maybe that’s why you look so gloomy and cross. It’s part of the brand.
You looking all cheery wouldn’t work really.
A statue of Happy Henrik just wouldn’t wash.
And I know you had a lot to be angry about. I know the way capitalism worked back in your day made you so angry, and the vile establishment with its filthy hypocrisy and its compulsive need to cover up its own crimes.
And the way women were forced to live. That hurt you.
And I love you for holding up the mirror to it all, knowing they’d hate you for it, and doing it anyway. Doing it anyway because you had to.
You had to even though it meant you had to leave Oslo because you were getting nowhere, and live and work in Germany, in a country and a language that wasn’t your own, and write to get published because for a while it was a waste of time writing to get performed.
And I honour you for it with all my heart.
It is strange, really, that you should now be up there on your pedestal, among the great and the good and an establishment you so loathed and despised.
But that’s the thing, Mr. Ibsen. You’re the establishment now.
And it’s your turn to be undermined.
I’ve been trying to do it for years and years, Mr Ibsen, break down the fourth wall, open up the naturalistic space you so firmly established.
They’ve called me an open sewer, just like they called you, Mr I, and it’s not very nice.
But it does mean people think we matter.
And there’s never going to be a statue of me, Mr. Ibsen, but if there ever is, I hope I’m shown happy.
I was sitting on my windowsill the other day, Ibsen, and people passing sometimes stopped and said “That’s a great place you’re in”, as they often do, and I’d say “thank you”.
As I always do.
And then suddenly, out of nowhere, someone stopped and looked me straight in the eye and said:
“Well done”.
And then again:
“Well done”.
And then
“Bless you. Bless you”.
And then, before I could recover from my astonishment to say a word,
She was gone.
And it moves me to think of it, Henrik, if I may, you fellow suffering human, and I want to say it to you.
And I think you deserve all the statues that are ever made of you.
Only I want you standing on the ground.
Right here beside me.
So we can look each other in the eyes….