Another quotation, this time from a letter to Brandes, must be given to show what Ibsen's attitude was at this moment to his fatherland and to his art:
"When I think how slow and heavy and dull the general intelligence is at home, when I notice the low standard by which everything is judged, a deep despondency comes over me, and it often seems to me that I might just as well end my literary activity at once. They really do not need poetry at home; they get along so well with the party newspapers and the _Lutheran Weekly_."
If Ibsen thought that he was offering them "poetry" in _The Enemy of the People_, he spoke in a Scandinavian sense. Our criticism has never opened its arms wide enough to embrace all imaginative literature as poetry, and in the English sense nothing in the world's drama is denser or more unqualified prose than _The Enemy of the People_, without a tinge of romance or rhetoric, as "unideal" as a blue-book. It is, nevertheless, one of the most certainly successful of its author's writings; as a stage-play it rivets the attention; as a pamphlet it awakens irresistible sympathy; as a specimen of dramatic art, its construction and evolution are almost faultless. Under a transparent allegory, it describes the treatment which Ibsen himself had received at the hands of the Norwegian public for venturing to tell them that their spa should be drained before visitors were invited to flock to it. Nevertheless, the playwright has not made the mistake of identifying his own figure with that of Dr. Stockmann, who is an entirely independent creation. Mr. Archer has compared the hero with Colonel Newcome, whose loquacious amicability he does share, but Stockmann's character has much more energy and initiative than Colonel Newcome's, whom we could never fancy rousing himself "to purge society."
Ibsen's practical wisdom in taking the bull by the horns in his reply to the national reception of _Ghosts_ was proved by the instant success of _The Enemy of the People_. Presented to the public in this new and audacious form, the problem of a "moral water-supply" struck sensible Norwegians as less absurd and less dangerous than they had conceived it to be. The reproof was mordant, and the worst offenders crouched under the lash. _Ghosts_ itself was still, for some time, tabooed, but _The Enemy of the People_ received a cordial welcome, and has remained ever since one of the most popular of Ibsen's writings. It is still extremely effective on the stage, and as it is lightened by more humor than the author is commonly willing to employ, it attracts even those who are hostile to the intrusion of anything solemn behind the footlights. CHAPTER VII