Sunday, March 13, 2011

We are Ibsen's Ghosts. Pitifully afraid of light.

GHOSTS.  Henrik Ibsen wrote in Act 2: "I almost think we're all of us Ghosts. ... It's not only what we have invited from our father and mother that walks in us. It's all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we can't get rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see Ghosts gliding between the lines. There must be Ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sand of the sea. And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light."

1 comment:

  1. "Is it not strange — up there in the north the day is dawning, the song-birds are twittering, there are gleams of light; levers, powerful, and flower-garlanded, such as are offered to no other people, are offered to ours with which to raise themselves; but they do not rise."

    -- Ibsen, speaking of his homeland, from which he exiled himself.

    This could be said of Aztecs, Arabs, Chacobo, Cubans, Bantu, Ik, Sicilians,...

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