Росмерсхольм: Призраки прошлого и бремя выбора

Play by Henrik Ibsen

Rosmersholm is an 1886 play written by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It tells the story of Johannes Rosmer, an aristocratic former clergyman and owner of the Rosmersholm manor who is haunted by his wife's suicide and his own idealistic desires for societal reform, and Rebecca West, a strong willed companion who challenges his convictions, leading to a deep exploration of morality, political activism, and the struggle for personal and social change amidst a backdrop of intense personal and political turmoil. Rosmersholm has been described as one of Ibsen's darkest, most complex, subtle, beautiful, mystical, multilayered and ambiguous plays. The play explores the tension between old and new, between liberation and servitude, between narratives, action or inaction, and of "what to do with ourselves when the world collapses around us." Rosmersholm and The Wild Duck are "often to be observed in the critics' estimates vying with each other as rivals for the top place among Ibsen's works." Ibsen scholar Jon Nygaard writes that the loss of joy of life is an underlying theme of several of Ibsen's plays, including Rosmersholm, in which "the spirit of the dead and the aristocracy of officials [lingers heavily] over the manor [and] the Rosmerian view of life ennobles man – but it kills happiness". A key theme in Rosmersholm and other plays was, according to Nygaard, "the joy of life that was lost – and the new Puritan Civil Servant State that was coming. It was the spirit of civil servants from Upper Telemark, the Paus family."

The central image of the play is the White Horse of Rosmersholm, the "family ghost" in Rebecca's phrase. It is seen, or rumored to be seen, by the characters after the suicide of Beata. The horse symbolizes the past that revolves around Rosmer's dead wife, and haunts the survivors. The presence of the horse at their death represents their incapacity to "deal with" the memories that haunt them. The white horse is similar to the "ghosts" that Mrs. Alving refers to in Ibsen's 1881 tragedy Ghosts. Ibsen selected the name of Rosmer for his protagonist in conscious echo of the Norwegian legend of Rosmer Havmand, a merman who lures a young woman to her death by drowning; it is the allure he holds for Rebecca that stirs up disaster. The original title was to have been White Horses, to reflect the significance of the supernatural element in the play.

Ibsen often used his childhood environment and relatives as models for people, environments, motives and events in his plays, and this also applied to Rosmersholm. Ibsen scholar Jon Nygaard writes that the loss of joy of life is an underlying theme of several of Ibsen's plays, including Rosmersholm, in which "the spirit of the dead and the aristocracy of officials [lingers heavily] over the manor [and] the Rosmerian view of life ennobles man – but it kills happiness". A key theme in Rosmersholm and other plays was, according to Nygaard, "the joy of life that was lost – and the new Puritan Civil Servant State that was coming. It was the spirit of civil servants from Upper Telemark, the Paus family," Ibsen's relatives on both his parents' sides. A major influence on Ibsen, particularly in the play Rosmersholm, was his collaboration with the early Realist poet Carl Snoilsky.

A radio adaptation, translated by Frank McGuinness and directed by Peter Kavanagh, was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 15 January 2017.

Rosmersholm has been described as one of Ibsen's most complex, subtle, multilayered and ambiguous plays; Rosmersholm and The Wild Duck are "often to be observed in the critics' estimates vying with each other as rivals for the top place among Ibsen's works." British writer Cicely Isabel Fairfield took the pen name "Rebecca West" from the character in Rosmersholm. The 2018 novel Lethal White by J. K. Rowling (under the pen name Robert Galbraith) opens each (otherwise untitled) chapter with a line from Rosmersholm. In 2019, the play was revived at the Duke of York's Theatre in London in a new adaption by Duncan Macmillan under the direction of Ian Rickson, starring Tom Burke, Hayley Atwell and Giles Terera.