IBSEN, Emperor and Galilean [Paperback]

Henrik Ibsen (Author), Brian Johnston (Author, Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1575251949 | ISBN-13: 978-1575251943 | Publication Date: November 1999 | Edition: 1

Emperor and Galilean was published in 1873 when Ibsen was at the height of his creative powers. He saw it as the cornerstone of his entire dramatic output. He had completed the two great poetic dramas, Brand and Peer Gynt, and was about to embark on the cycle of twelve modern plays, beginning with Pillars of Society and concluding with When We Dead Awaken , which were to establish his unrivaled international fame. While the plays of the Realist Cycle are well-known, Emperor and Galilean still awaits discovery by modern readers, actors and directors.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The publisher continues its "Great Translations for Actors" series with this 1873 epic, from Ibsen's middle period, which Ibsen considered his masterpiece. The story of Emperor Julian the Apostate, this was his last play to have a classical setting, and it signaled his adoption of a more prosy and less poetic dialog. But it is still drama on a vast scale; written in two parts, with five acts in each part, it covers the years 351-363 C.E. Under Constantine, Prince Julian becomes emperor, turns against the austere piety of Christianity, and embraces the superstitions and passions of Hellenic paganism. The events lend themselves to some highly dramatic scenes, and Ibsen makes the most of them. His dialog reads smoothly in this skillful translation. The work is seldom performed (owing to its length), but the translator has provided the full text, leaving it up to a director to decide what to cut. Recommended for large theater arts collections.AHoward E. Miller, Rosary H.S. Lib., St. Louis
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Translator Johnston points out that this 2-part, 10-act historical drama is a transitional work for Ibsen. Before it, his plays were histories, fantasies, and beefed-up folktales; after it, he wrote his great realist dramas, 12 in all, from Pillars of Society (1877) to When We Dead Awaken (1899). For that reason alone, Ibsen's seldom-produced, gargantuan masterpiece is worth reading, and Johnston's clear, contemporary translation makes it all the more so. The vast play focuses on Roman emperor Julian's rise to power and his misbegotten attempts to roll back the clock and return the increasingly Christian eastern half of the empire to its former pagan glory. But the Christians were inspired, determined, and driven. The pagans were not. As Ibsen demonstrates, Julian's motives were pure, and his critique of the early Christians, especially their hypocrisy and contentiousness over every small point of dogma, was sound. Why Ibsen found Julian's story relevant in 1873 remains a question--for scholars, however. Meanwhile, Johnston's beautiful English rendering of it compels our attention today. Jack Helbig

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Smith & Kraus Pub Inc; 1 edition (November 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1575251949
• ISBN-13: 978-1575251943
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #180,275 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "You have won, Galilean.", August 13, 2009

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Sean Curley (Charlottetown, PE, Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: IBSEN, Emperor and Galilean (Paperback)

Henrik Ibsen has gone down in history as one of the premiere dramatists of the 19th century (and of all-time), primarily on the strenght on a long run of plays written in the last decades of his career that helped to define the 'realist' school. Discussions of which was his best work most commonly bring up "Hedda Gabler", "A Doll's House", and "Ghosts", among others. However, in what for most people functions as a curious footnote in Ibsen's biography, he insisted to the end of his life that his magnum opus was "Emperor and Galilean", an 1873 historical drama written just before the beginning of his 'great' works, which is scarcely ever performed.

For his subject, Ibsen has chosen Flavius Claudius Julianus, Emperor of the Romans, known to history as Julian the Apostate, the last pagan to hold that position. Though he ruled for a span of less than two years from 361 to 363, he has been the inspiration for numerous artistic works in the 1800 years since his demise. The historian Lord Norwich commented that "of all the eighty-eight Emperors of Byzantium, it is Julian who, more than any other - not excepting the great Constantine himself - has caught the imagination of posterity[.]" Upon obtaining the throne, he made the main policy initiative of his regime the restoration of paganism at the expense of Christianity, something that has inspired numerous historical "what if?" scenarios, led to his demonization by subsequent Christian historians, and in the last while led to his appropriation by anti-Christian modernists as a doomed hero.

Ibsen's Julian is somewhere between the villain of Gregory of Nazianus and the heroic polemicist of Gore Vidal. The play, Ibsen's longest work, consists of two five-act parts: "Caesar's Apostasy", which, per the title, chronicles Julian's gradual loss of his Christian religion and his rise to the purple; and "The Emperor Julian", which follows his time in office and the gradual decline of his reasoning. He starts out with a number of cogent arguments, particularly against the hypocrisy of the supposedly Christian court that he grew up in, under Emperor Constantius, who ordered the execution of his parents. Of course (and this is something missed by both Julian and his most ardent literary and historical admirers) this hypocrisy is really far more a universal characteristic of courts than of Christianity. By "The Emperor Julian", however, he becomes increasingly divorced from reality: beholden to reading omens in whatever way suits him, baffled by the opposition his policies provoke in his Christian population, responding to every little thing by writing a pamphlet which he claims will prove his enemies wrong, and ultimately leading the imperial army to the brink of destruction.

In line with popular rumours (though not backed up by the accounts immediately after his death), Julian is depicted as being killed by one of his own (Galilean) men. With his passing goes any hope of his vague, personalized paganism returning to supremacy, as the Galilean General Jovian is acclaimed as his successor as emperor (Jovian, incidentally, would reign for only eight months, but that's not important). Whatever the value of Julian's goals, his life provides a dynamite subject for fiction: one man (a philosopher-king) out to reshape the world in his image, ultimately brought down with his ambitions unfulfilled.

Rarely performed because of its tremendous length (and the comparative critical unimportance it has traditionally been assigned), "Emperor and Galilean" is well worth the time of fans of historical fiction (particularly of this time period) and Ibsen.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Greatest Play I Ever Read, November 18, 1999

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Bukkene Bruse (Iowa) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: IBSEN, Emperor and Galilean (Paperback)

A play magnificient in scope, Emperor and Galilean examines the reign of Julian the Apostate. It is set outside of Norway. The characters are a bit more human than idea and the reader vascillates in sympathy towards them, particularly Julian. As such, this play differs from the other prose plays that most readers would associate with Ibsen. I do ask why it has been so long since this great play has been made available to an English reading audience.