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A review by eb00kie
The Lady From The Sea by Henrik Ibsen
4.0
As my first Ibsen play, this is utterly atypical, but hardly lacking. It starts slow, but the ending is spectacular; the characters are complex and engaging and strongly contemplative. The Lady from the Sea is strongly symbolic, strange, out of the cultural contest, for a first reader like me, and captivating in its representation of romantic love, especially near the end of act IV. There's a fascinating discussion on the terrible "that which repels and attracts", marriage as something between bargain and union, as a matter of both promise and free choice.
That being said, theatre and poetry benefit much from being read in the original language. This style of translation is tone-specific; the dialogues, but for the strangeness of their content, sound English ("Fiddlesticks"). However, despite similarities of structure between English and Scandinavian languages, the former has a wider breadth of slang and vocabulary that translates into nuance. The Scandinavian languages, on the other hand, are terse - to me, almost spartan - which leaves a greater burden of feeling on each of their words. The play feels much diminished.
That being said, theatre and poetry benefit much from being read in the original language. This style of translation is tone-specific; the dialogues, but for the strangeness of their content, sound English ("Fiddlesticks"). However, despite similarities of structure between English and Scandinavian languages, the former has a wider breadth of slang and vocabulary that translates into nuance. The Scandinavian languages, on the other hand, are terse - to me, almost spartan - which leaves a greater burden of feeling on each of their words. The play feels much diminished.