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John Gabriel Borkman

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Ibsen's plays are classics. They are enjoyable, intelligent, engrossing, dramatic comments upon society. They are relevant today as they were in the 1890s.

The nineteenth century John Gabriel Borkman, like the twenty-first century's Bernie Madoff, bilked his friends of their life savings. Both were highly respected until they were caught and sent to jail, and both had lived well. Ibsen examines the impact that Borkman's nefarious acts have upon him, his wife, her sister, his son, and his friends.

Borkman spent three years in detention, then five years in jail, then, after his release, eight years in the upper story of his sister-in-law's house, for he had no money any more. For eight years he walked back and forth in his room, like a caged rat, waiting for the day that he was certain would come when he would rise again.

Ibsen focuses especially on three episodes. Borkman wanted so strongly to obtain wealth and power that he gave up what was important to him. Without realizing what he was doing, in a Faustian fashion, he gained power and wealth, but destroyed his own life and the life of another. What prompted his need for power? What did he give up? Who was involved? Who did he especially hurt?

Borkman's wife hates him. During the eight post-prison years, she refuses to meet with him although they live in the same house. Why?

Borkman's sister-in-law helps him for Borkman did not squander her funds. Why? Why also did she raise his son? What affect did all of this have on her and his son?

The subject of John Gabriel Borkman (1896) makes it seem like a companion piece to some of the writer's earlier dramas The Pillars of Society or Enemy of the People, dealing with the subject of corruption, or at least an act of guilt in the past on the part of an individual that is to have a profound effect on the wider community. It's the aftermath of such a situation that is viewed here but, as one of Ibsen's latter plays, the subtext of John Gabriel Borkman is that of an act of corruption by an artist, who has forsaken the truth and love for more material gains, a theme that is borne out by Ibsen's next and final drama, When We Dead Awaken (1899), where the subject is made even more explicit.

In the case of John Gabriel Borkman, the figure at the centre of the intrigue is a disgraced bank manager who has served five years in prison for financial irregularities that brought about the collapse of the bank and the savings of many people in the community. Borkman has served a further three years locked in the upstairs apartment of the house leased to the disgraced family by his sister-on-law Ella Rentheim. Borkman's failings however go deeper than his mere failing as a banker - in the past he renounced his love for Ella in order to become a successful and powerful businessman. Now, both his wife and her twin sister are seeking restitution for the losses they have suffered and hope to achieve it through his son, Erhart. Erhart however is unwilling to join in the "Danse Macabre" that has erupted around him and wants to take off and find happiness for himself.

The hints that there is a rather more autobiographical context to the drama are found to some extent in the suffering of most of the characters associated with Borkman. Nearly all of them however have to share responsibility for their own failings - a complication that makes the role they play rather richer and more complex - but the purity of the artistic endeavour that has been lost or corrupted can be seen in Borkman's former assistant Fodal, an aspiring writer who doesn't have self-belief, or who has rather sacrificed his art for the people around him, perhaps foolishly. Borkman doesn't lack in confidence, aware that the keys to the kingdom were once in his grasp, but that his ability to retain them has long since passed and he is now "dead" to the world. The question that arises is whether the dead can awaken and redemption be achieved, a subject that Ibsen also approaches in his last drama, and to which the answer here would seem to be an equally bleak and dispiriting one.

The publisher created this book utilizing OCR software. There are multiple typos on every page, in some cases rendering words incomprehensible. This is explained by the publisher as a cost-containment measure. So everyone wins! What a joke. This particular book should never have been published. I wish I had gone elsewhere to read this wonderful play.