Dag Solstad's Shyness & Dignity
In the middle of Act IV. Where Mrs. Sørbye appears in Ekdal’s home and announces that she is going to marry Werle, the merchant, and where Ekdal’s lodger Dr. Relling is present, and he read (himself, instead of asking one of his pupils to do it, which he did at times for the sake of appearances, but he preferred to do it himself): “Relling (with a slight tremor in his voice): This can’t possibly be true? Mrs. Sørbye: Yes, my dear Relling, indeed it is.” As he was reading he felt an unendurable excitement because all at once he thought he was on the track of something to which he had not previously paid any attention when trying to understand The Wild Duck. For twenty-five years he had gone through this drama by Henrik Ibsen with eighteen-year-olds in their last year of high school, and he had always had problems with Dr. Relling. He had not fully grasped what he was doing in the play. He had seen that his function was to proclaim elementary, unvarnished truths about the other character...