Dag Solstad's Professor Andersen's Night

I can say that, being a professor of literature, and say it to you, my colleague. My nerves shriek in dread at the thought of no longer possessing a historical consciousness, because it means that our day and age will disappear along with us, so when we stage Ibsen at the National Theater, my nerves relax, because if we can stage a play from the last century in one of the country’s finest buildings, with extensive publicity and often to a full house, then the coming generations may regard us in the same light. But it isn’t Ibsen’s work we perform, it’s Ibsen’s reputation. To the work as such, we are more or less indifferent, yes we are, now barely a hundred years after it was written. It’s the stage director’s work we see performed, Stein Winge’s or Kjetil Bang-Hansen’s. It’s Winge’s work and Ibsen’s reputation. My stomach churns in protest at the thought of there being no reputation so great that it can’t survive a hundred years. We want to have immortal works, but do such things exist, for us? Ibsen’s best plays are just barely a hundred years old, we call them immortal already, but are they? Even now we can see how difficult it is to make them seem relevant to us. On stage they have to be modernized and made contemporary, so that we will experience something so-called great while watching them, and even then it doesn’t succeed, as a rule. And as drama to be read? Occasionally I think, after having read through and studied, for instance, Ghosts: well, was that all? Was there nothing else? Was this the most outstanding accomplishment of the 1880s, was this the most outstanding intellectual accomplishment in Europe in the nineteenth century? Certainly it’s good, but is it really the most outstanding achievement that can be accomplished? It will probably turn out that it is, but my question still remains: was that all? Is there nothing else? I have actually studied Ghosts for years, and know that it’s perfect. Yes I am and will continue to be impressed by what it is, perfect, but nonetheless I ask: was that all? Was that it? I am not stirred by it. I’m not shaken. Not like the audience when it was performed for the first time, as a contemporary event.