cultural resources in henrik ibsen's early environment - Ibsen.net

ealizing inner conscious purpose. And the more nations struggle forward in culture and
freedom, the more obviously and more directly will the former law assert itself. Now the
first outline acquires the tendency towards unity first in literature; it is most especially a
literary unity which evolves. Such a one exists already in general features--one can say--
over the whole of civilized Europe; in spite of what is characteristic, and marked
obviously enough by the language of the different literatures, there is yet a European
literature with its heroes: Dante and Tasso, Molière and Racine, Shakespeare and Lord
Byron, Goethe and Schiller, Holberg and Oehlenschlæger--a literature which more and
more demands the attention of all educated people, whereas for example the Slavic and
Turkish literature with its hundreds of writers is still regarded as being irrelevant to us.
Such a literary commonality will now doubtless more and more disseminate itself; yet
one cannot leave it there; since that striving for unity is only articulated for the
conciousness and realized so to speak inwardly; it seeks gradually also to take possession
of the outward domains and accordingly must finally also touch upon the political. It is
precisely characteristic of the most recent--freedom's--time, that circumstances develop
from within, that literature accordingly is a forerunner for politics, and not, as previously,
an idle spectator.
In the old days of barbarism it was not the people but the princes who concluded
alliances; they then attempted to make use of whoever they could in order to support their
power, and accordingly then one not uncommonly saw the sight of a "tiger mating with a
lamb," since the tiger's and the lamb's lord found such an unnatural connection answering
to his interests. No fruitful connections for mutual transmission of culture and freedom
were then intended; the prince's private passions determined the destiny of the people.
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