Dear Reader,
Each quarter during the design process, I try to image or mirror our external environment to pin the timeline. This quarter was rife with mischievous witchery: Political insults and commentary, the thoughts of money galore going in all directions other than where it might be most needed; such colour and who knows what will happen, what power-players will lead us on from Obama’s reign.
Peer Gynt (1867) is Ibsen's second 'dramatic poem', following Brand (1866). In the summer of 1862 Ibsen had made a trip to Gudbrandsdal, one of the valleys of central Norway, north of Oslo, and his studies there meant he was able to give Peer Gynt a genuine historical basis. But Ibsen's highly individual mythical world goes far beyond actual folklore. He also made critical and ironic comments about narrow nationalism. Throughout, his epic poem is a dramatic dialogue with multifarious implications. The literary historian Edvard Beyer (1920–2003) says it is both 'fairytale and picture of folk-life; tragedy and fantastical, satirical, Aristophanic comedy; dream play and morality'. Its portrayals of erotic yearning have features in common with earlier European Romanticism. Biting intellectual irony, humour and wit mingle with poetic and compassionate insight. Peer Gynt leaves his loved ones in the lurch, like a modern-day chameleon, without scruples. Grieg saw in this a philosophical critique of contemporary ethics: 'the performance of Peer Gynt can do some good just now in Kristiania [Oslo], where materialism is on the up and is trying to choke everything we find best and most sacred; what we need, I think, is a mirror in which all this egotism can be seen, and Peer Gynt is just such a mirror.' Through satire, the play shows up our (self-)destructive side and the falsehoods within us. But it has a serious and constructive message too, which Grieg played his part in developing and expressing.
Our "Just Like "Peer Gynt."" is not an epic poem but it is a dialogue—dramatic in areas—with multifarious layers that reflects our literary past in essay, prose, poetry and art as it trips us into our future.
My best,
Marie Lynam Fitzpatrick
Managing Editor